The decision of the OPW to spend nearly half a million euro building a wall around a Government office is proof they are still “burning through taxpayers’ money”, Aontú has claimed.
Just months after the a FOI request found that the department spent €336,000 on a bike shed outside Leinster House, the OPW has revealed it spent €490,000 replacing a perimeter wall outside the Dublin HQ of the Workplace Relations Commission - more than double the original estimated cost of construction.
On The Hard Shoulder, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín described it as an “incredible” amount of money to spend on such a minor project.
“This wall is not even the length of a GAA pitch it’s so short,” he said.
“You talked about a failure of maths there, one of the reasons why there was an increase in costs in this is because they didn’t realise that they hadn’t enough bricks at the start of the project.
“As a result, when they were building it, they had to stop, they had to review it, they had to go find a brick that looked like the original brick.
“That increased the cost as well.”
#BREAKING: The OPW has changed its spending rules after admitting the cost of the Dáil bike shed was ‘completely unacceptable’.https://t.co/xzKMrS9SRv
— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) September 25, 2024
Deputy Tóibín said knowing how many bricks needed to build a wall is a “sixth class maths question”.
“It’s also an incredible situation that the scoping exercise wasn't done properly because in that part of Dublin, if you dig anywhere, you’re probably going to hit something,” he said.
“The fact that that wasn’t built into the process is also incredible.
“For me, the OPW is in an incredible situation at the moment; they see themselves as a luxury brand dealing to a coddled political class.
“There doesn’t seem to be any focus on value here whatsoever and they are burning through taxpayers’ money at a fierce rate at the moment.”
The Meath West TD described the department as “tone deaf” on the issue of achieving value for money and predicted taxpayers would see their money “frittered away over and over again”.
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Main image: A split of Peadar Tóibín and a wall. Picture by: Alamy.com .
