The State body behind the Dublin metro project paid €514,000 for two reports from the same accounting firm, in an exercise yielding no more than 33 pages of written text so far.
The reports were delivered this year to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) from EY, formerly Ernst & Young. EY is scheduled to deliver a further 100-page report before the end of December under one of the contracts.
In the middle of an election campaign in which the Opposition is attacking Government parties for wasteful spending, the transport body’s EY expenditure amounts to thousands of euro for each page of text.
The money was disclosed on Tuesday in a parliamentary reply to outgoing Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy, who accused State bodies of “out of control” spending on consultants.
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“On what planet does a 17-page report warrant a €144,000 price tag? To add insult to injury, the report is into metro – on which vast sums have already been spent over many years, before the ground is even broken,” Ms Murphy said.
“It beggars belief that consultants have also received €370,000 for what appears to be an eight-page draft report. This is a ‘bike shed’ level of waste of public money. We are told a 100-page report is in process, but is €3,400 per page value for money?”
TII is responsible for national roads, Luas light rail and the proposed €9.5 billion Dublin Metrolink project. It has 293 staff, 60 of them paid more than €100,000.
The body said the purpose of EY’s work was to ensure the body was “organised in the best way possible” to effectively deliver multibillion-euro projects in the National Development Plan.
Although the State has already spent €300 million on various Dublin metro projects, no construction has been carried out. In June, the Government agreed to pay New Zealand expert Sean Sweeney a €550,000 salary as Metrolink director. He also receives €30,000 in relocation expenses, private health insurance and a leased car.
TII recently asked EY to study a “hybrid delivery strategy” to future-proof its capacity for five years, at a cost of “approximately €370,000″ excluding value-added tax.
Asked for the report, TII provided an eight-page draft from June. The draft found TII “already uses a hybrid delivery model” but called for investment “in both resourcing and technology to continue to deliver effectively”.
Asked whether the draft was the extent of EY’s work, TII said “a 100-page implementation report” was due later this year under the €370,000 contract.
TII separately asked EY to provide a “Metrolink capacity and capability assessment” report at a cost of some €144,000 excluding VAT.
Asked for that report, TII provided a February document comprising 17 pages of text and eight pages of supplementary information. The report cited a consensus view that action was needed urgently “to address the leadership/expert management gaps which exist to manage the magnitude of the impact that this issue will have on project success”.
[ No substitute for experience when it comes to delivering infrastructureOpens in new window ]
A letter from EY partner Shane MacSweeney said the report was “based on consultations with key stakeholders, management information, desktop research of publicly available information” and utilised “EY methods”.
The appendices included case studies on the National Children’s Hospital, the London Crossrail project and the Sydney Metro, which summarised other reports. The report on the National Children’s Hospital that EY summarised was written by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), another accounting firm.
TII said: “These reports are blueprints outlining the measures required to strengthen TII’s delivery capability and capacity for Metrolink, Luas light rail, national roads, greenways, national cycle network and alternative fuel infrastructure over the next decade”.
EY’s spokeswoman said the firm “does not comment on client matters”.
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