Sir, – We are constantly confronted by evidence of our abject failure to deliver public infrastructure projects on time, on budget or at all.
Exhibit A for the prosecution is probably the National Children’s Hospital. Honourable mention should be made of the Dublin Metro, the M50, offshore wind, upgrading the Cork to Limerick road and draining the Shannon. The big idea for the upgrade of the rail system comes with a mooted timeline of 2050.
But it’s the little things that bring home to us the chronic sclerosis.
Seven months ago, Dublin City councillors decided to close to public access a lane in the city centre by erecting a few gates. Olivia Kelly reports on progress in this major undertaking (“Dublin lane open seven months after closure ordered”, News, August 19th).
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In March, the council told The Irish Times that the specifications for the gates had been agreed and that they would be installed “in the near future” (this an elastic concept much beloved of bureaucrats). In June, the progress report was that the gates were being fabricated with a view to their installation “in the summer” (a term not without some elasticity but suggestive of a modicum of urgency).
The latest news from the front is that the gates will be installed “in late September” (now we’re getting somewhere).
We might be ill-advised to hold our breath. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.
