Compensation claims by the contractor employed to build the South Eastern Motorway in Co Dublin, which are currently running at €200,000 per week, are expected to double when delays associated with the Carrickmines interchange are taken into account, writes Tim O'Brien.
Compensation claims by the contractor employed to build the South Eastern Motorway in Co Dublin, which are currently running at €200,000 per week, are expected to double when delays associated with the Carrickmines interchange are taken into account.
Already Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is understood to be in receipt of a claim for €200,000 a week for delays in gaining access to the motorway site. The claim, by the main contractor Ascon, is understood to arise because access problems delayed its summer working timetable at the start of the contract in 2001.
A spokesman for Ascon said the company was specifically precluded from commenting on any aspect of the contract, and the number of weeks for which the company is claiming €200,000 is unclear. However, sources suggest the start-up delay could have put the works schedule out by as much as six months, which represents a figure of about €5 million.
The council's director of transportation, Mr Eamonn O'Hare, was not available for comment this week but the claim was confirmed by Mr Michael Egan of the National Roads Authority. Mr Egan told The Irish Times that he was not personally aware of the duration of the delay. While all claims made against the council are necessarily the subject of negotiation and possibly even arbitration, Mr Egan said the roads authority was expecting Ascon to make a second claim against the council for delays at Carrickmines Castle, due to the archaeological protest there.
"We couldn't really see such a claim being any less than the original one", he said.
Such a result could see Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council facing claims as high as €400,000 per week for an unspecified number of weeks.
The situation has led Fine Gael member of the council Ms Olivia Mitchell TD to call for the council to "buy itself out of the South Eastern Motorway contract and start again".
While she said the implications of such a move were "enormous," the council could not have itself exposed to ongoing claims and a risk it was unable to quantify.
While Ms Mitchell put the loss the council is facing as a result of the Carrickmines project at the lower figure of €50,000 to €100,000 per week, she said the "magnitude of the planning risks are enormous, unknowable and completely open-ended".
She said it would not be possible to attract the private sector to build infrastructure if such an unquantifiable risk was allowed to continue and she called on the council to negotiate the termination of the motorway contract immediately. She added the council could "design a temporary termination point for the motorway pending final court clarification".
She also said south Dublin was suffering heavy traffic congestion "while a small group, with no personal financial exposure, seek every legal effort and other means to frustrate efforts to solve the traffic problems".
However a spokesman for the Carrickminders, Mr Ruadhan McEoin, said cost overruns had been incurred "because the road was drawn through the remains of Carrickmines Castle and that line was drawn by the councillors themselves.
"I think there are a few key questions here and they include why did the council sign the contract for the road before they listened to the advice to the archaeologist Mr Mark Clinton on what was likely to be found".