‘National scandal’: Committee seeks urgent meetings on €50m write-off of Irish Rail IT project

THE PUBLIC ACCOUNTS Committee is to seek the “earliest possible meeting” with the bodies involved in a €50 million write-off of a failed Irish Rail IT project.

It was reported in the Irish Times that Irish Rail has “no confidence” in a planned traffic management system.

Under the initial proposals, the system was targeted to be commissioned in 2024, with a target cost of €19.5 million.

As of the most recent update provided to the Public Accounts Committee, over €31.5 million had been spent on the IT system, with not even the first phase completed.

The new IT system was intended to regulate train movements across the state and the National Transport Authority (NTA) described it as the “critical component” in the broader National Train Control Centre project.

The new National Train Control Centre is being developed at Heuston Station to replace the existing Central Traffic Control Centre at Connolly Station which is reaching its end-of-life.

The chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Sinn Féin’s John Brady, said he knows from “the minutes from Irish Rail that the project manager had previously expressed zero confidence in the ability of the contractor company to deliver this particular project”.

The contractor is Spanish-based Indra Group, which was given the contract to develop the system in 2020.

Brady said the issue also “raises serious safety concerns” and represents a “national scandal”.

“In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, I think anybody sitting at home looking at this has every right to be absolutely furious.”

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Fianna Fáil’s Paul McAuliffe added that it is “incredibly disappointing that this news is broken in a newspaper rather than by way of correspondence”.

He called for the Committee to seek the “earliest possible meeting” with the Department of Transport, the NTA, Irish Rail, and the Chief Information Officer.

Elsewhere, Fine Gael’s Grace Boland was praised by her Committee colleagues for her work in questioning the project, and she said the “warning signs were there”.

Boland added: “More so concerning is the fact that you Irish Rail has no confidence in this system, and the fact that it is around safety”.

Boland said the “taxpayer deserves answers on this” and that “we really have to have a very substantial answer from the NTA”.

She noted that Irish Rail is not subject to the Committee but asked that they be invited in a voluntary capacity “so that we can get a full picture of what actually went wrong”.

Fianna Fáil’s Catherine Ardagh added that “€50 million in a time when we’re having cost of living prices, it’s a huge amount of money” while Fine Gael’s James Geoghan said it is “incumbent on this committee to identify where the accountability lies for this”.

“The NTA came before us in January and said, ‘in hindsight, the level of granularity of the definition of requirements was not developed enough at the start’.

“Now that is looking like the greatest understatement of the millennium, I mean, €50 million has now been written off by Irish Rail on this project and there just simply has to be accountability.”

Meanwhile, Aidan Farrelly of the Social Democrats warned that “when it comes to IT projects the Irish State just can’t manage them, and the tail is wagging the dog in that respect”.

“There’s just been too many inconsistencies when it comes to failed IT projects,” added Farrelly.

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