MINISTER FOR Transport Noel Dempsey yesterday accused the chief executive of one of the State’s largest construction firms of making a “self-serving” speech at the official opening of the €207 million Gort bypass.
A row between Mr Dempsey and Finn Lyden of SIAC Construction broke out after the developer used his speech to attack Government capital-spending plans by saying “it is a sad reflection of the state of our economy that our working futures are abroad”.
Mr Lyden urged the Government to scrap the planned Metro North project as it “is displacing other projects that have certainty of delivery and a more immediate impact on the economy and the construction industry”.
Mr Lyden said the 250 workers on the Gort scheme, which represents the next 22km phase of the Atlantic Corridor, had been laid off or emigrated. Mr Lyden said, to applause from the construction workers present: “One wonders if the loss of 250 jobs in a manufacturing plant in the west of Ireland would attract as little attention as the loss being experienced by construction companies engaged in public sector infrastructure.”
Mr Lyden was last in a succession of people to speak before Mr Dempsey at the event. The Minister put his prepared script aside to say Mr Lyden’s comments “are a little hard to take when you consider €13 billion has been spent on road infrastructure in the last 10 years. It is a little bit unrealistic to expect that we can spend another €13 billion over the next 10 years providing roads that may not be needed.”
“There is an absolute necessity for a project like Metro North. I don’t see how a construction job like Metro North with 4,000 jobs directly and 3,000 indirectly are any different to ones that will be provided by roads,” he added.
The Minister said Mr Lyden’s speech was “a little self serving, failing to recognise that the Government has had the highest level of capital spend over the last 10 years of any country per capita in Europe and continues to have a higher per capita spend on capital even in the very difficult circumstances that we are in currently”.
The new road built by SIAC Will Bros JV will remove 8,000 to 10,000 cars from Gort daily and is expected to reduce travel times between Galway and Limerick by 20 minutes during peak hours.
Mr Dempsey said the scheme “is a very, very good example of the positives in the country that we don’t hear half enough about”.
Speaking to reporters after his address, the Minister said in relation to Mr Lyden’s remarks: “I’m justified about being a little bit angry at one-sided comments that don’t recognise the reality that we face at the moment.”
Mr Dempsey said “unbalanced, negative comments like that don’t do the country any good. Some people don’t seem to realise that the situation in the country has changed very, very significantly. We have to borrow every penny that we’re spending now.”
But he said he was confident that the next phase of the Atlantic Corridor between Gort and Tuam will commence early in 2011.
Earlier, the Minister met landowners along the route of the Gort-Tuam scheme to discuss their concerns about its possible flooding impact.