The State on its own cannot afford to build the roads we need so private sector help will be required to meet the €16 billion cost of the plan, writes Una McCaffrey.
The roads aspect of the National Development Plan is over-budget and behind schedule - which will not come as a surprise to anybody who can identify themselves as a commuter in the Republic.
That the problems are not as vast as we might presume and, furthermore, would not necessarily be fixed by the injection of Government spending, could, however, be more difficult to swallow.
More private finance, when coupled with cost savings on implementation is, according to the experts, the path to salvation.
If the Government listens to their advice, we can expect to hear a lot more about public-private partnerships (PPPs) and greater use of tolling in the months ahead.
A confidential report submitted to the Department of Transport by economic consultants Indecon in recent weeks shows that, in the first three years of the National Development Plan (NDP), the amount of money spent on roads has exceeded the initial budget on every occasion.
Taking Exchequer financing alone, actual spending is 13 per cent higher than planned.
Estimates on what the roads programme will cost over the complete term of its implementation have, meanwhile, ballooned from €6.8 billion to €16 billion.
Yet, despite the cost overruns, physical progress has fallen significantly short of what we had originally been led to expect.
The reasons for this are well-documented and include delights such as higher land costs, initial estimation problems and flyaway construction inflation.
"Estimates suggest that unit costs are well above expectation and that the programme is likely to take a further three to six years to complete," Indecon notes, recognising that the original timeframe (ending in 2006) was simply too ambitious, even without the cost problems.
The lack of physical progress is reflected in the limited time savings that have been achieved for travellers on the Republic's roads.
Of the five major inter-city routes that feature in the NDP, work on just one - the Dublin/Border route - has, so far, saved a single minute for those who use it.
This stands against a vague rule of thumb that the roads aspect of the NDP should result in savings of about 25 per cent on trips using key routes.
Given that roads account for more than 90 per cent of all journeys made within the Republic, the need for an acceleration in construction is obvious.
Happily, Indecon concludes that "significant improvements in journey times and reduction in journey time variations can be expected over the next couple of years".
Indecon says almost half of the major inter-urban network should have reached the required standard by 2007, with work under way on another 35 per cent of planned improvements.
On the same routes, Indecon estimates that about 30 per cent of the network will be completed by the end of this year.
This is close to the medium-term target.
Progress varies by route however, with the road between Dublin and the Border, for example, much more advanced than the Portlaoise/Cork route.
Of the €2.6 billion spent on roads in the first three years of the programme, more than half has gone on major inter-urban routes, while bottlenecks on smaller roads have gone largely unattended.
Indecon recommends that the upgrading of "intermediate sections" of larger inter-city roads might be delayed so that big problems on less prominent routes can be addressed.
Understandably, the consultants see the need for a review of both targets and timeframes so that the second half of the NDP can be better-managed than the first.
In this light, the National Roads Authority is preparing a revised programme of spending based on more realistic Exchequer funding of €1.2 billion per year, as well as more money from private sources.
The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, is also planning to publish an outline of a "clear strategy for transport in the Republic in the years and decades ahead, according to a speech he delivered yesterday at a logistics conference in Dublin.
If he follows the rest of Indecon's advice, Mr Brennan can be expected to start peppering his conversation with reference to PPPs, the golden creatures designed to speed up public investment while lessening risk for the Exchequer.
It was originally envisaged that PPPs would contribute about €1 billion to the roads programme, a level which stood, at the time, around 20 per cent to total cost estimates.
In the event, progress has been much slower than expected, but Indecon still concludes that PPPs will make a "significant contribution to the future delivery of the roads programme".
It says that 11 such projects are already on track but recommends that the experience of PPPs to date be evaluated so that it can be established whether they really lead to a reduction in costs for the Exchequer taking account of the risk transfer involved.
"There is also the issue of whether the need to have a sufficiently large project to attract private sector interest has impacted upon road design issues," the review notes.
Urging the Government to consider "all possible options" for funding roads, the consultants also make a big play for tolling.
They form a link between the standard of roads and the money consumers will pay to use them, and call for tolling to be expanded in the context of experience to date.
Indecon also places much emphasis on saving money on the roads programme as it currently stands.
The company recommends a revision of procedures at contract and procurement level so that good competition and cost savings can be encouraged.
It also says that more efforts should be made to lower land acquisition costs - a factor which has contributed much to the overruns in the programme to date.
Indecon also raises the notion of reviewing the standard of roads on a case-by-case basis so that parts of major routes that attract lower traffic volumes can be differentiated from busier areas of the same road.
Cost savings must, according to the consultants, be awarded "high-level priority".
