Brennan plans major shake-up of roads body

The Department of Transport is planning radical changes to the National Roads Authority (NRA), including the appointment of a new finance directorate and staff to ensure tighter control of spending on the national roads programme.

Under the measures being finalised by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, the NRA will also assume responsibility for contracts with road construction companies, a function currently carried out by the local authorities.

Although the NRA currently finances the State's national road projects at €1.5 billion per year, and jointly operates local design offices with local authorities, its role is officially a "funding agency".

The Department of Transport believes a change in its status to become a "implementation body" would concentrate greater control over contracts and spending into one agency.

The changes also propose that all staff in the 11 local design offices across the State report exclusively to the NRA.

The proposed changes follow the delivery of a key report from consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to the Minister, which it is understood recommends "strengthening the delivery role" of the NRA.

While the National Roads Authority lobbied the PWC consultants that it should be allowed to raise up to €2 billion through effectively mortgaging a number of existing and new tolls, it is understood the proposal has not been warmly received by the Minister, Mr Brennan.

Once this issue is resolved, the reform package is to be brought to Government by Mr Brennan as part of a wider Government strategy to maintain control of costs in major infrastructural projects.

Sources indicated yesterday, however, that this could be within a matter of weeks, after the Minister publishes for the first time the results of budget and time-monitoring arrangements for major infrastructural projects.

The results are expected to reflect well on the NRA, whose chief executive, Mr Michael Tobin, yesterday told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that a 2002 assessment of its work by Fitzpatrick Economic Consultants had found projects undertaken in 2001 and 2002 were just 0.15 per cent off budget.

Mr Tobin said a more recent internal assessment of 16 current road schemes with a collective worth of €2.7 billion had predicted an outcome just 2 per cent off target.

In a robust response to criticism by the Green Party TD, Mr Dan Boyle, Mr Tobin said talk of a €10 billion overspend on the National Roads Programme was inaccurate.

Mr Tobin said it was true that the National Development Plan had produced a roads programme estimated at €5.6 billion in 1999, but the cost of that has been misjudged and it should have been €9.3 billion by the end of 1999.

The Government had decided to increase the specification of the roads programme, adding the cost of the Waterford motorway, along with other schemes which were added or expanded in scope.

The entire programme was then subjected to 42 per cent inflation over the years 1999 to 2002, and it was now at €15.8 billion.

The NRA was supported by the secretary general of the Department of Transport, Ms Julie O'Neill, who told the committee that "it is very clear that we are not talking about the same programme that was published in the National Development Plan".