SOME OF the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever planned by the State have been deferred for at least five years as part of budgetary cutbacks announced by the Government yesterday.
The most high-profile casualties of the five-year capital investment programme are the €3 billion-plus Metro North project in Dublin; the €2.5 billion Dart underground rail-link also in the capital; Thornton Hall prison; and the plan to bring all the Dublin Institute of Technology centres to a single location in Grangegorman.
However, a small number of major projects will still begin between now and 2015, including the linking of the two Luas lines in Dublin city, and the €650 million national children’s hospital on the grounds of the Mater hospital.
However, the funding for the children’s hospital will come from non-State sources.
Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin confirmed yesterday that, given that the existing licence to operate the National Lottery expires next month, the Government will consider having the successful bidder for the new licence pay an up-front fee to underwrite the capital costs of the hospital.
The Government announced it had committed to spending €17 billion on capital projects in the five years between 2012 and 2016. Cuts for the first three years total €1.3 billion, or some 12 per cent down on the Government’s own revised estimates published only four months ago. Details of the final two years of the plan have not been included in previous estimates.
Capital expenditure for next year will be €3.93 billion, or €755 million less than provided for in the July estimates, which put the figure at €4.69 billion.
The most dramatic scaling back in capital spending is in transport, which will fall by almost 5 per cent from €1.5 billion in 2011 to €800 million in 2016. Annual capital expenditure in transport was running at an average of €3 billion up to 2009.
The modest scale of the plan compares to the National Development Plan launched by then taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2007, which envisaged investment of up to €184 billion between 2008 and 2013, over €150 billion of it from the State. It included the €34 billion Transport 21 plan.
This plan’s allocation for transport is 10 times less than that of the 2007 plan. And with more than 85 per cent of its allocation required to maintain existing roads and railways and replace bus and train fleets, the scope for new projects open to Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar is limited.
Along with Metro North and the Dart Underground or interconnector (which would provide an 8km underground rail link between Inchicore and the Docklands, linking up all the rail systems), other longer-term projects such as Metro West, the Luas extension to Lucan and further phases of the Western Rail Corridor have been deferred indefinitely.
On roads, the M20 Atlantic corridor has been postponed with completion of projects already underway such as the N11 Arklow to Rathnew, the N17 between Tuam and Galway, and the Ballaghaderreen bypass on the N5 taking priority.
The only high-profile project getting the go-ahead is the less costly – but logistically problematic – plan to link up the two Luas lines in Dublin, along with a spur line for the system through Broadstone to Broombridge, where it will link up with commuter trains from Maynooth. However, the project is scheduled to begin towards the end of the period and is not expected to be completed for at least seven years.
Some €2 billion will be spent on health over the five years, with priority given to the children’s hospital, the replacement of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum (with full exchequer funding), and the provision of the national radiation oncology project.
