Mayor demands answers on project over-runs

The city’s mayor wants to know how eleven City Council tender projects for roads and housing ran €3.2 million over budget in 2012.

There were over-runs on contracts ranging from just over €15,000 to the €6.7m Seamus Quirke/Bishop O’Donnell road project.

In two of the smaller projects – involving house adaption for the disabled and the real-time passenger information signs – the over-runs were almost 70%.

“A lot of questions must be answered over the scale of this over-spend and somebody has to be held accountable,” said Mayor Padraig Conneely.

He said, that when over-runs in cases were of the scale of 69%, it had to be a cause of major concern to the City Council and to the people of Galway.

“Here we have 11 contracts entered into by Galway City Council where over-runs of €3.2 million occurred. We need to look at this as a matter of urgency,” said Mayor Conneely.

In a written report to city councillors, the City Council’s Head of Finance, Edel McCormack, said that in all public work contracts, some delays and variations were inevitable.

“As a result of that, an increase in both price and materials may therefore arise over the term of the project.

“Consequently, the Capital Works Management Framework and Article 31.4 of the Public Procurement EU Directive, permits contract amounts to exceed their original tender value, up to 50% of the amount of their original contract,” she stated.

The biggest over-run in projects included the Seamus Quirke Road (Coffey Construction, €6.7m originally with a €1.7m add-on); the N6 Modal Corridor Improvement (Coffey Construction, €1.97m, add-on of €433,000) and also Madden Construction (€961,000, add-on of €260,00) and Stage 3 of the Galway Main Drainage Scheme, (Coffey Construction, €908,000, add-on of €472,000).