Price of upcoming College Green Plaza soars from estimated €10m to €80m as councillors urge restraint
In an update provided to a Dublin City Council (DCC) Mobility and Public Realm Strategic Policy Committee, project head Marie Galvin said the anticipated cost had now risen to €80m, which includes a 40pc contingency.
The project has doubled in scope from its initial design, revealed nine years ago, and inflation and labour costs have also significantly contributed to the increase since then.
Pedestrianisation is now proposed to extend from Trinity College all the way down Dame Street as far as the junction with George's Street.
Local Sinn Féin councillor Kourtney Kenny said that Government should be stepping in to provide funding for the project, as it was one that would benefit the whole country.
"Everyone in Ireland at some stage is going to come to Dublin, so there needs to be more pressure on Government to be paying some of those costs,' she said.
Ms Kourtney said even though she supports public realm improvements, allowing costs to soar in such a dramatic fashion was 'heinous'.
'We need to put more attention on how we can get the best bang for our buck and not just be burning money and allowing the costs to balloon like this,' she added.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn said the plaza was a waste of public money, and the funds should be spent instead on more pressing issues.
"We don't have a pedestrian or a plaza crisis. We have a homeless crisis, we have a housing crisis, we have a medical crisis, we have a crisis of anti-social behaviour in these very areas,' he said.
"And they think by doing this, they're going to solve problems. It's nonsense.'
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Mr Flynn said he could foresee costs continuing to 'escalate' with the project.
"The €80m figure is just bullshit, this is an architectural conservation area (ACA). Anybody who even looks at this will want treble the money because it's an ACA,' he said.
"They don't know what they're going to find when they dig into the ground. You've got the Luas, you've got all those different things there, and this will absolutely escalate in costs.'
Green Party councillor Feljin Jose said costs had risen so much because the project had taken so long to proceed, but cautioned that the €80m figure was an estimate at this stage, not a costed figure.
'We've seen three different visions of this over the last ten years, and the longer we leave this, the higher the total cost of inflation, labour costs, and the scope of the project has increased so much as well.'
'We have nobody to blame but ourselves [for the increased cost]. You know, we've been talking about this project for so long.'
He said the project had been further delayed by the National Transport Authority's slow rollout of BusConnects, but that the council should still proceed with the plaza.
'The city needs this, we desperately need this, and we should absolutely go ahead with it. And if we wait it's not going to get any cheaper.'
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
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