The Government approved a €550,000 salary for the project director of the proposed Dublin MetroLink system following warnings that the failure to secure a suitably qualified person for the role would “represent a significant and unacceptable increase in the overall risk profile” of the project.
The Department of Transport advised the Department of Public Expenditure that it would also “potentially expose the taxpayer to foreseeable and avoidable costs in the future”.
At the end of June, the Department of Transport announced the appointment of Sean Sweeney, from New Zealand, as the project director for MetroLink following a global recruitment campaign.
It said he would receive an annual salary of €550,000, provision of private health insurance cover as well as a leased electric vehicle company car. He would also receive moving and relocation expenses of up to €30,000.
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The move means that Mr Sweeney will be one of the highest-paid individuals working in the Irish public service.
In a note to the Department of Public Expenditure in March seeking approval for the terms for the role, the Department of Transport described MetroLink as a transformative piece of public infrastructure that would likely be “the largest-ever public investment project in the history of the State”.
[ Public consultation on Dublin’s long-awaited MetroLink reopensOpens in new window ]
The 18km MetroLink system is designed as a fully segregated, driverless and mostly underground high-capacity new rail link running between Swords and Dublin city centre.
The Department of Transport said that top of the list on the risk register for Metrolink, as provided by the National Transport Authority, was that the State agency Transport Infrastructure Ireland would have insufficient resources “to support the procurement and overall delivery programme”.
“The most critical role within these required resources is that of project director.”
It said it was imperative that clarity be provided to allow a formal offer to be made to the preferred candidate for the post.
“The importance of ensuring big projects are led by individuals with the required experience and capabilities is well understood, both domestically and internationally, and was underlined by the observations of the then department of public expenditure and reform’s Major Projects Advisory Group in its review of MetroLink’s preliminary business case when it noted ‘it will be critical to secure a project director with international experience of managing and leading other large metro or tunnelling projects’.”
The Department of Transport argued that the open recruitment process carried out by Transport Infrastructure Ireland had shown that a lower salary rate for the post was insufficient to attract the calibre of person recommended by the Major Projects Advisory Group.
On the appointment of Mr Sweeney in June, the Department of Transport said Transport Infrastructure Ireland had engaged UK-based specialist recruitment agency Newsom Consulting to assist it in conducting the recruitment process.
“Following a comprehensive benchmarking exercise of remuneration in the transportation sector, it found that the mean average total remuneration, excluding any additional benefits, was €623,516.”
The Department of Transport told the Department of Public Expenditure that it acknowledged that the proposed terms and conditions for the project director role were significant in a wider public pay environment. It maintained, however, that the amount involved was “appropriate to the international market within which Ireland was competing for this relatively limited pool of expertise”.
The Department of Public Expenditure said that, given the need to recruit a person with relevant experience and expertise and that substantial efforts to recruit at a lower salary did not yield an appropriate candidate, its Minister, Paschal Donohoe, agreed to a salary of €550,000 for a fixed-purpose contract.
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