Figures released by the National Roads Authority (NRA) show the taxpayer is getting a bad deal from public investment in the Kilcock to Kinnegad motorway, while a private company is making a handsome profit, according to Westmeath Fine Gael TD Paul McGrath.
Figures provided by the NRA in correspondence with Mr McGrath show that €268 million of taxpayers' money was invested in the motorway, which was built by a public private partnership. By contrast, the Eurolink Consortium invested €190 million in the project. The company put up €40 million directly and borrowed another €150 million from banks.
A spokesman for the NRA rejected Mr McGrath's criticism, saying that a rigorous cost-benefit analysis carried out by KPMG had shown that building the motorway by a public private partnership would provide a better deal for the taxpayer than having the project carried out by public authorities alone. The motorway was built in time and on budget.
However, Mr McGrath maintained the deal was bad from the taxpayers' point of view. He said that as well as putting up more than half the cost, the taxpayer was then being hit for a toll of €2.50 for every journey on the motorway.
"The income from the tolls for the N4/N6 with a daily traffic of 20,000 cars and, at the rate of €2.50 per journey, would provide an income of €18.2 million annually," he said. "This of course is a very conservative figure as traffic volumes continue to increase and tolls go up."
On the basis of the figures supplied to him, Mr McGrath calculated that annual expenditure incurred on the project by the consortium was €8.19 million to service the bank loan, €3 million in road maintenance and €2 million in staff costs.
"What an investment this project actually turned out to be, with income of €18.2 million and expenditure of €14 million giving a healthy annual profit of €4 million, or 10 per cent of the Eurolink original investment of €40 million.
"The Eurolink Consortium can only improve on this profit with increases in both volumes of traffic and in toll charges in the future," he said.
Mr McGrath asked why the Government did not consider using the National Pensions Reserve Fund, which currently stands at €15.4 billion, to invest in the project. "The taxpayer would then have seen a healthy profit into the pension funds and those profits would have been kept in the taxpayer's purse rather than going to a private consortium."
Mr McGrath said that the public private partnership route was followed because the current Government was incapable of building major infrastructural projects on time and within budget.