Pat Leahy: Purse is tight when those in need have no access to power

When, as they never do, youngsters approach me for advice on their careers, I tell them: get into the business of building something for the Irish State. Not alone can you take twice as long as you promised to finish the job, but you can probably charge three or four times the original budget. This is nice work if you can get it.

Being sceptical beyond their tender years, the youngsters respond that surely this cannot be so. I am pleased to furnish them with examples.

Transport leads the way. This week the National Transport Authority (NTA) published an updated transport strategy for the Dublin area. The summary provided by Olivia Kelly in The Irish Times was "a lot more money is doing a lot less work".

An awful lot more money. The cost of the full 20-year strategy has risen from €10.3 billion to €25 billion. To say that it will escalate further is not the boldest prediction you will hear this weekend.

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Former minister and now senator Regina Doherty once argued that Fine Gael's problem has not been overspending but that it has been too prudent with the public finances

The Dublin Metro is a spectacular example of the genre. First mooted in 2000 when national mammy Mary O’Rourke – then minister for public enterprise – promised 70km of track with three lines at an estimated cost of €4 billion. A couple of years later and Seamus Brennan had moderated the plan’s ambition to one line, costing €2 billion, but that would be operational by 2007.

The project was put on ice when the economic crash hit but revived once the economy recovered, and was included in the capital spending plan launched in 2018. Then it was estimated to cost €3 billion and would be completed by 2027, the government promised. New taoiseach Leo Varadkar proclaimed “now we can afford to invest again”, noting that “long-term planning is the cornerstone of good government”. Indeed it is.

The Metro appeared again this week in the new strategy, but it will not be running until after 2031. The NTA, one of the State bodies that proliferates in the transport area, declined to give an estimated cost for the project. But the Mail on Sunday got a steer on the revised cost a few weeks ago: an astounding €10 billion.

I inquired of someone who is in a position to know: is that on the money? Bang on, I’m told. Another source has a minor correction: €10.45 billion, he says. But then what’s €450 million between pals? And now get this: over €240 million has already been spent on the project.

Readers will be familiar with the saga of the national children’s hospital, now rocking ahead for a total cost that is somewhere north of €2 billion – for a project initially budgeted for €800 million. Memorably, the former minister and now senator Regina Doherty once argued on this issue that Fine Gael’s problem has not been overspending but that it has been too prudent with the public finances. All one can say is that the party has been working hard in Government to correct that flaw.

Let us not, at this point, digress into the national broadband plan for fear it would drive us to drink.

Generously affecting to be interested in this lengthy disquisition, the young people ask me – imploring a briefer answer than the last – if there is any career that I would guide them away from?

Don’t, I tell them, do something that tries to help the poorest, most disadvantaged members of our society, living in dysfunctional households, wracked by drugs and addiction.

Because then you may find that the funds available in apparently limitless amounts to the transport quangos for overspending on construction projects, for the ballooning budgets of vote-winning projects, for consultants and feasibility studies and consultation processes and all the rest of it – are not available to you.

'Don't tell me what you value,' Biden said. 'Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value'

Earlier this week Kitty Holland reported in graphic and disturbing detail the effects of an explosion in crack cocaine-use in deprived communities in west Tallaght. The effects on the community there are atrocious – "increased public-order problems, intimidation, open dealing, violence, serious mental and physical health issues, increased suicide rates, child-protection concerns, increased poverty, self-neglect, forced prostitution and homelessness", she wrote. On individuals they are catastrophic – lives are being utterly destroyed. The personal stories are horrendous.

The Tallaght Drug and Alcohol Task Force, which compiled the report, says it needs an urgent injection of €1 million to help address the crisis. The money is for eight new staff, a youth work project, to upscale its existing crack cocaine programmes to deal with demand, 10 hours additional administration a week to help manage the new demands and new residential places on treatment programmes.

The group’s total funding isn’t much more than a million euro, while just half a million euro was set aside in this year’s budget to tackle crack cocaine addiction nationwide, the group says.

Any sign of the extra funding since the report was issued?

“In short, no, there’s been nothing,” says Grace Hill, co-ordinator of the project.

“I won’t hold my breath. I’d like to be proved wrong,” says Senator Lynn Ruane, who is from the area.

More money alone, of course, won’t solve this or any other drugs crisis. But it will help. And the problem certainly won’t get better without money.

But you see, I tell my now dwindling audience of mightily bored youngsters, the purse strings are held very much tighter when those in need of it have little access or proximity to power.

I’m tired of quoting Joe Biden on budgets, but as this is a subject we return to again and again I’m going to do it once more: “Don’t tell me what you value,” he said. “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”

By that standard there are some pretty uncomfortable questions we should be asking ourselves.

Even the youngsters agree with that.