Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín has slammed government parties today as they voted in the Infrastructure Committee to abandon the pre-legislative scrutiny of their Critical Infrastructure Bill
Speaking after the committee, the Meath West TD said:
“This legislation has long been touted by FF, FG and their Independent colleagues as a flagship initiative to speed up the delivery of infrastructure across this country, address systemic failures and delay and ensure progress on large projects that are currently stuck in the administration and procurement quagmires.
Today, their members of the Infrastructure Committee voted to ditch pre-legislative scrutiny. This means before the Bill is drafted, we won’t hear from construction companies, public bodies and the public on what this Bill should contain and aim to achieve. It is an attempt by Ministers to thwart any attempt to focus the scope of the Bill and ensure it actually addresses the problems communities are seeing year after year.
The irony of the government voting against pre-leg scrutiny on the Critical Infrastructure Bill in the Committee on Infrastructure while at the same time the Health Committee received evidence that the National Children’s Hospital will be delayed for the 18th time will be lost on no one.
The contractor of the National Children’s Hospital is now seeking additional payments that exceed the project’s original €700 million price tag. We have reached a point of absolute absurdity where the extra costs being demanded by the developer are higher than what the entire hospital was supposed to cost in the first place. But there its clear that the government has learned little. This key piece of legislation demands scrutiny . We cannot afford this level costly dysfunction ever again. If we don’t get this right, citizen will be cursed with footing the bill for many more disasters into the future.
