Madam, - In yesterday's editorial "The right route", you quote Prof Austin Smyth's criticism of the failure of the Minister, Martin Cullen, to present Transport 21 proposals without an "accurate statement of costs and full quantification of benefits". Everything you said about the failure to make the economic case for Transport 21 applies in spades to the proposed parallel runway for Dublin Airport. In the roads case, the Minister hides behind "commercial sensitivity". In the runway case, he hides behind the Dublin Airport Authority.
No cost benefit analysis was done of the proposed runway or of possible alternatives such as better development of Cork and Shannon airports or a second airport for the Dublin region. Such an analysis is required under guidelines issued by the Department of Finance. Mr Cullen told the Dáil on June 22nd, 2005, that he had been "informed by the Dublin Airport Authority that all capital projects are subjected to rigorous appraisal procedures and ultimately board approval, in compliance with the guidelines issued by the Department of Finance". If this is true, a cost benefit analysis must have been done because of the project's size. We therefore have to take it that Mr Cullen believes such a cost benefit analysis was carried out. It was not.
Freedom of Information requests failed to find it and now consultants for the Dublin Airport Authority effectively admit that it was not done, when they claim in a report prepared for An Board Pleanála that it would be too hard to get right for such a "major piece of infrastructure".
Astonishing, is it not, that the sheer complexity of the project is used as an excuse for not having done what is required by the Department of Finance?
The Portmarnock Community Association was less daunted by complexity and did its own cost benefit analysis, albeit with less rigour than expensive consultants could do. Nevertheless, by concentrating on some costs which are so huge and easily estimated at a minimum, we were able to conclude that the proposed runway will waste at least €3 billion of public and private assets, while a carefully sited second airport for the Dublin Region would give us our money back with 7.4 per cent real interest!
Is it not obvious that transparent evaluations of these major public projects are avoided because too much light would be thrown on them for political comfort? As you rightly say, this smacks of the Soviet Union, before glasnost. - Yours, etc,
MATTHEW HARLEY, Martello Court, Portmarnock, Co Dublin.