Dept of Finance Security Shelter cost €1,429,000

MrMusician18

Is a portacabin appropriate in that location, or a cheap breezeblock box?

Tork

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122653970#Comment_122653970

I hope they are, and that we see more evidence of the OPW's mismanagement of our money. Anybody who has ever had dealings with the OPW or has seen the wastefulness and inefficient work practices knows exactly what I'm talking about. The only way the OPW can ever be taken to task in any meaningful way is if journalists unearth more stories and expose them to the light.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654158#Comment_122654158

Excuses. The Tanaiste is also shocked it seems.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has branded the €1.4m spend on a security hut at the Department of Finance as “ridiculous” and demanded a “fundamental review” of the cost.

Speaking in New York today, Mr Martin said he “was shocked to hear that figure this morning”.

"It's ridiculous. There's no need for that level of expenditure. I think we need a fundamental review now of what's happening there, and full transparency in front of the Oireachtas of the actual breakdown of costs, that does seem shocking, in terms of what is there that it would cost that amount of money."

Cluedo Monopoly

It was Green Party TD Steven Matthews that probed the OPW on the cost of a new security hut today in the committee. He must have been tipped off.

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122653970#Comment_122653970

And rightly so - that is essentially the work of the good journalist, however how much will/does the average citizen get exercised by these types of articles? Indeed, as stated already we have had multiples of the figures thrown doing the toilet in the recent past (RTE, Childrents Hospital etc) and nothing really changes.

Now, if I were a journalist, I would be questioning why the OPW introduced this specific project into the public realm today………is this a smokescreen to deflect from the bike shelter (there may be a number of reasons people would want people to look elsewhere…….)

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654340#Comment_122654340

A Green TD (Matthews) asked a question about it and the OPW had the figures available.

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654379#Comment_122654379

Ah thanks, I wasn't fully aware of the context.

Nothing to see here - move on to the higher spend issue.

Tork

Reports of overspending on bike and security shelters resonate more with the public. It's easier for the OPW to obfuscate when it comes to more complex projects, whereas it's harder to hide when it comes to these simpler structures.

thebourke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654014#Comment_122654014

It really wants you to pay taxes in this country when you see the waste by the public sector ….i reckon its billions we are wasting every year

BorneTobyWilde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654116#Comment_122654116

..

Markus Antonius

All the green-blooded bleeding hearts coming out to defend Eamon Ryan (who pushed for the bike shed) saying he wasn't responsible for its construction. And now it comes out that the minister responsible for expenditure at Leinster House is none other than GREEN minister (and wife of GREEN minister for tourism Catherine Martin) Francis Duffy!

tayto lover

I wonder who got a nice new extension to their own house around the same time?

SuperBowserWorld

Bloody hell, that's just one department's security shelter.

The place can probably be hacked remotely. This is just more lipstick on a pig.

Leprechaun economics for the sheeple.

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654158#Comment_122654158

Construction costs have gone crazy because our permanent government continuously fans the flames of the Irish one trick property pony. I bet you are happily milking the property market. 😁

Grassy Knoll

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654158#Comment_122654158

you are absolutely correct 1.5 m is a lot of money but the cost is symptomatic of how out of control construction has become generally. However a large part of the cost of that project is actually in the ground…. There is a hydraulic barrier that is mounted in the road the vehicles pass through , I presume top of the range security does not come cheap. My sense is when the cost breakdown is published, while still very high, will be seen a different light.

The bike shed is in any person’s language hard to justify, but it seems the political system are partially complicit in this given the siting etc

kneemos

When was it built and are we talking about current construction costs?

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655141#Comment_122655141

Well, it's completed, so we're not taking about current construction costs.

Grassy Knoll

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655141#Comment_122655141

opened before the summer. Yes, mad money but all construction now is mad money. Public contracts are generally a higher spec ( we can discuss whether that is good or bad) plus other payment practices prevalent in parts of the private sector don’t go on.

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122653686#Comment_122653686

Not too prudent when trying to bury this story.Well done to the digging reporter.

NIMAN

I don't see why there are calls for an inquiry.

What will it achieve? It'll cost money itself and in the end noone will be held responsible. It will be rinse and repeat until the next public waste of money.

The current government is playing into SF hands perfectly. If the election is to be in November, all these scandals came at a very bad time for them.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655196#Comment_122655196

Accountability for public money and make sure nothing underhand or incompetent is going on.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122654856#Comment_122654856

I got slammed for pointing finger at the Greens

And here we are

Cluedo Monopoly

Where is Patrick O'Donavan? He is the Minister with responsibility for the OPW. He should be front and centre on this.

NIMAN

We need to see detailed breakdowns of where exactly every cent went.

If we had proper investigative journos in this country, they have perfect subject matter here. Find out how much every item cost, and if that's the same cost it would be if supplied to me or you. If it's being inflated because it's a government project, then name and shame the companies involved. In fact, all the companies involved should be named anyway, and how much of the €1.4m or €338k they got for each of these scandalous builds.

Are we the only country where this sort of extravagant spending would happen? I wonder are our other EU neighbours governments plagues by such scandals as well? I somehow don't see this sort of waste being acceptable in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands. But then again, maybe it happens the world over?

Andrea B.

Stolen from a comment somewhere on twitter regarding next election.

A poster referenced printing up a leaflet with images, costs (including all the zeros) of the NCH, bike shed and security office and leaving them in a holder outside front door, so as to exchange with politicians when they come canvassing.

Edit. Yeah, I know, why bother. Water off ducks back.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655302#Comment_122655302

Of course we aren't the only country where it happens. Irish exceptionalism is so tedious.

This is a far less clear-cut case than the bike shelter. The number sounds large but we have absolutely no idea how much it should have cost.

thecretinhop

I have dealt with many public sector bodies in my time. It used be outright corruption brown envelopes etc.

Now it's a project that should cost maybe 10k but the tender that get it is for 400000. They then div up the money themselves and get an intern to design the website for like 1k.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655298#Comment_122655298

Out in the far reaches of west Limerick. Can only be contacted by post and takes about 5 days for a letter to reach him…

Floppybits

The security hut should have cost the €330K that was used to build the bike shed.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655196#Comment_122655196

If the election is to be in November, all these scandals came at a very bad time for them.

The scandals might well determine the timing of the election, if the next opinion poll records any sort of dip for FFG…

Augme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655705#Comment_122655705

Theres a scandal every month for FG though. The next one could be worse.and I've no doubt there are stories being deliberately held until an election is called.

techman1

Whoever signed off on this should be fired as well as the person who signed off on the bike shelter

I bet they working from home aswell like most of public sector, probably had to wait for them.to be in on Wednesday for it to be signed off

techman1

Of course we aren't the only country where it happens. Irish exceptionalism is so tedious.

This is a far less clear-cut case than the bike shelter. The number sounds large but we have absolutely no idea how much it should have cost.

No but the other countries aren't our European peers but dodgy dictatorships in Africa and Latin America where the elites spend so much of their resources on themselves. Because the country is awash with corporate tax money the public sector can get away with so much waste and incompetence because there is money for alot of other stuff anyway. They are squandering money rather than allocating it to proper infrastructure like they do in the rest of Europe.

Cluedo Monopoly

Security hut costing €1.4m shows lack of respect for taxpayers, TD says.

Security hut costing €1.4m shows lack of respect for taxpayers, TD says (breakingnews.ie)

John McGuinness, the chair of the Oireachtas Finance Committee, said the system has failed people and no responsibility is taken when something goes wrong.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show, the Fianna Fáil TD said there needed to be political leadership in each department and responsibility should be taken by public servants about spending.

Mr McGuinness said one way to do that was to increase the powers of the Comptroller General and Oireachtas committees, such as the Public Accounts Committee.

The Comptroller General should audit all public spending, otherwise “we will have error after error”, Mr McGuinness said.

He said there would have to be an examination about why the OPW decided to deliver the bike shed project at a cost of €350,000 and “why no one said stop?”

The €1.4 million cost of the security hut at Leinster House should also be questioned, he said.

“I have no doubt that there are security issues and the need for security technology and so on, in that hut. But you would question the €1.4 million spend and whether it was value for money or not.

“I believe that the systems behind the delivery of these projects have failed the people, have failed the country and the different departments that spent that money. I have no doubt that you could have done the job much cheaper, much more efficiently and still dealt with the problems that you had in the first place.”

He added: “There seems to be no respect for taxpayers’ money. And there seems to be no responsibility taken when something goes wrong and that we can't allow that to continue.”

…………

FG don't do reform so the likes of the Comptroller General and SIPO will never get extra powers. Not while the trough is full of MNC tax.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656386#Comment_122656386

Again, this is hysterical garbage. Our "European peers" waste money on bad projects and inefficient infrastructure. The Germans being a particularly good example of this with Brandenburg Airport being a scandal multiple times as bad as the NCH and their rail system being an utter joke. Or a Spanish regional authority buying trains that didn't fit the rail tunnels.

None of this excuses any potential or proven overspend in the Irish public sector. But exclaiming how it could only happen in Ireland makes you look very silly.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656718#Comment_122656718

The HS2 project in England has turned into a white elephant. Kinda ironic given their historical knack of building rail lines all over the world.

Baba Yaga

im not worried about how the German,French,Spainish,Italian,english goverments pish away their taxpayers money,im concerned about how our goverment is pishing away OUR tax money…

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656766#Comment_122656766

Not really a Government issue. The OPW are given a budget. The Civil Service you need to be annoyed at.

Baba Yaga

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656788#Comment_122656788

i annoyed with the whole lot…

Baba Yaga

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655039#Comment_122655039

i gave an example of the gate house on the place i work in (i do security) it came in at €146,000 with all modcons and fully equipped,there is no way costs have gone up that much in 2 years…those barriers you mention are about €6,000 each ,allowing that those are super heavy duty,you need 3 to 4 to cover a normal entrance,they are powered by an electric pump for the hydraulics to raise them,if we had those put in,bomb proofed the hut here we are still only at about €250,000…about a hundred grand short of a bike shed and about a million and a quarter short of the leinster house "hut"

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122653414#Comment_122653414

I was involved in a design of a similar building a number of years ago. I don't remember the final cost, but I think it was around the 120k mark.

It didn't have the ornate swirl at the top which does not appear to have any practical purpose though.

The costs for some things like this can be eye watering because they have to conform to certain requirements. For example, I assume the glass is bullet proof, which makes sense.

That said, 1.4M is someone taking the piss.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655687#Comment_122655687

Thats the thing though. I wouldn't be surprised if the initial quote was around the 330k mark and someone said "You mean its going to cost the same as the bike shed? Clearly you have not done due diligence on this, come back when you have a more grown up figure".

ednwireland

just reminds me of the is scene

https://youtu.be/1SuDSNWH9AQ?si=sr-ABJxxZUAkQ-di

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656961#Comment_122656961

I was thinking the same thing. I very nearly included that clip.

kneemos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122656938#Comment_122656938

Why would they have bullet proof glass

Podge_irl

You can't put a flat roof portacabin esque structure outside such an historic building. It needs to have some architectural merit.

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122655518#Comment_122655518

Agreed, this is a bit less clear cut than the bike shelter but the same logical reasoning can be applied.

The bike shelter, even with groundworks etc shouldn't have come near a spend of 40-50k and even that is exceptional. I am allowing for a lot of overheads there.

We may not know the specifics of the security shelter of have anything to compare it to but you can bet your bottom dollar it could have been done significantly cheaper, like the bike shelter.

As others have said the figures involved, the decision making process and the companies and individuals that the money ended up with needs to be published but they/it won't