A multi-million-euro "reusable" exhibition building was dumped and the remainder sold for scrap for €19,000, after it became too expensive to reconstruct back in Ireland, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard yesterday. The Irish Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover has now cost the State about €8 million.
A third-level design college, which had originally planned to relocate the building to its campus, was also left with a €500,000 bill for dismantling the structure in Germany, after the real costs of the relocation plan became apparent.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr John Purcell, told the PAC yesterday the final destruction had brought "closure" on the ongoing saga of the pavilion, which has been the subject of a number of reports.
In 1998 the Government decided to take part in Expo 2000, a decision which Mr Purcell said was "as much to secure German-Irish diplomatic relations" as for any commercial reason.
A report on the funding of the Irish Pavilion by the C & AG three years ago found that senior officials had expressed reservations about the project because of its limited potential to promote Ireland commercially.
The 14,000 sq ft building was designed on the theme of sustainable development, and it was envisaged that, when the exhibition was finished, it would be dismantled and relocated to Ireland, preferably on a campus.
Mr Purcell said yesterday these plans had had to be abandoned because of unrealistic costs provided by the OPW.
In March 2001 Dún Laoghaire Institute obtained funding of €2.5 million from the Department of Education to relocate the building to its campus.
However, having paid €525,000 to have it dismantled, new costings revealed that the relocation and reconstruction would cost at least €3.1 million more, a sum far greater than the cost of erecting an entire new building of similar size on the site.
The costs had "really gone through the stratosphere at that stage", Mr Purcell told the PAC.
Mr Jim Devine, director of Dún Laoghaire Institute, told the committee that staff had approached the project "in good faith" and, through no fault of theirs, ended up paying for its removal.
Officials from the OPW told the PAC yesterday that the original estimates should have been, in hindsight, more accurate, but because Dún Laoghaire Institute was the owner of the building from March 2001, the dismantling costs were its responsibility.
Mr Tom Sherlock of the OPW said some of the building was sold for €25,000 to a developer in Germany, and the remainder was dumped at a price of €19,000.