Full Capital Expenditure Plan 2012 - 2016

Sponge Bob · 10-11-2011 1:29pm #1

Instead of drip feeding Veradkars latest local media appearances into the relevant theread why not read it all yourself.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/72243343/Infrastructure-and-Capital-Investment-2012-16

Neworder79 · 10-11-2011 1:41pm

Summary of New Capital Expenditure Plan
Key points from speech by Taoiseach, Minister for Public Spending

"Different economic times...report is about setting priorities"

- €17bn over next 5 years on capital projects "in line with European norms"
- €3.9 2012, €3.3 2013, €3.2 there on
- Prioratised on jobs, schools & healthcare
- "Strategic Development Fund" leveraging €250m from NPRF to provide up to €1bn for capital investments (New ERA)
- Many projects can't go ahead at current time
- €70bn invested over last decade, shift in emphasis from roads to public transport

- €2.1bn for 40 new p&s schools to accommodate 70,000 more pupils
- 180 school upgrades, some 3rd level projects cut
- €1.5bn for mental hospital, cancer care, primary health care projects
- €1.6bn for water/flood/environmental upgrades

Planned Projects
- National Children’s Hospital start next year, funded by up-front lottery license
- Luas BXD to go ahead linking Luas lines and on to Broombridge
- Bus replacement, QBC & Ballymun bus corridore, rail upgrade programs
- N11 Arklow/N17-18 PPPs to proceed pending securing investment
- Galway city bypass to continue planning
- N5 Ballaghaderreen bypass to proceed
- Some secondary and tourist route projects to be developed
- Focus on network maintenance and regional road investment

Deferred Projects
- Metro / Dart Undergound "dishonest to proceed with planning when funds not available"
- A5 Donegal/Derry-Dublin motorway "committed to project on a longer time frame"
- Thornton Hall Prison & Grangegomon DIT campus
- WRC and other planned road projects, to be reviewed in 2015

Irish and Proud · 10-11-2011 1:48pm

Neworder79 wrote: »

New Capital Expenditure Plan
Key points from speech by Taoiseach, Minister for Public Spending
<snip>

You beat me to it mate - just heard on the Ronan Collins Show (RTE R1).

I'm glad that Luas BXD is going ahead - it would be a disgrace not to proceed with it. I suppose the new children's hospital is some consolation for the Northside which has otherwise been so badly hit by the cuts.

bk · 10-11-2011 1:56pm

Nothing too surprising.

DART spur and intercity upgrades not even mentioned, good news.

Metro North and Dart Underground deferred for consideration in 2016. No surprise, but good news they weren't cancelled.

It any good news is to be taken from this report, it is that the importance of these two projects is stressed and they are mentioned separately from other much less useful projects which are also deferred (Metro West, Luas to Lucan, WRC, etc.) and are unlikely to go ahead even in 2016.

I get the feeling they recognise the importance of MN and DU and they might be back on the table in 2016.

Interesting to note they say emphasis on QBC improvements, in particular on the Ballymun/Swords corridor. Haven't heard anything about that, anyone know details?

No mention of BRT, but that could be part of these QBC improvements.

AngryLips · 10-11-2011 2:08pm

Neworder79 wrote: »

- A5 "Committed to project on a longer time frame"

What's this?

OssianSmyth · 10-11-2011 2:10pm

BXD not expected to begin construction until 2015

a quick summary of the changes to roads vs public transport budgets from last year to this year...

Overall capital drop in roads funding: 14%
Overall capital drop in public transport funding: 70%

From the FG/Labour Programme for Government this year:

We recognise the need to rebalance transport policy to favour public transport

Irish and Proud · 10-11-2011 2:11pm

AngryLips wrote: »

What's this?

The road from Derry towards Dublin in Northern Ireland - this road is numbered as the A5 in the North and the N2 in the Republic.

bk · 10-11-2011 3:01pm

OssianSmyth you are right, but the majority of the road expenditure is paying for the new roads that are already built, no avoiding that.

The massive fall in public transport expenditure is due to the cancelling of MN and DU, which aren't built yet.

It clearly shows Irelands failures during the Celtic Tiger years. We focused too much on roads and not enough on public transport. Had we previously had more balanced development, the cuts would also be more balanced.

Neworder79 · 10-11-2011 4:44pm

Looking more closely at the wording on the Transport Ministers press release I'm no more confident of some of the major projects happening today than before the announcement.

N11 looks to have the strongest support, but the M18 isn't specifically mentioned:

In terms of road projects funded through a Public Private Partnership, we aim to finalise funding arrangements for the N11 Rathnew/Newlands Cross bundle in the coming year. Other roads PPPs will be pursued where feasible during the course of the plan.

There's no mention of the GOB from Varadkar, though the Framework Plan document says:

Work will also continue on the Galway City Outer By-Pass (N6) to resolve the legal issues delaying the project.

Luas BXD won't start until 2015.

http://www.transport.ie/pressRelease.aspx?Id=446

trellheim · 10-11-2011 4:47pm

Where is the M20 ?
I thought given past posts here that after N11/Newlands X that that was the No.2 priority but instead roads in Galway seem to have priority. Politics ?

Sponge Bob · 10-11-2011 7:14pm

Newlands/Arklow has priority over the Galway projects, reading the wording it may not even be a PPP.

BluntGuy · 10-11-2011 8:05pm

Broadly in line with expectations, but what it is worrisome is that there is a lack of real, clear commitment to any longer term strategy. "Deferred for review later" can mean anything.

trellheim wrote: »

Where is the M20 ?
I thought given past posts here that after N11/Newlands X that that was the No.2 priority but instead roads in Galway seem to have priority. Politics ?

M20 has been effectively shelved. According to the document, NRA will be asked to withdraw it from ABP as there is no chance of it going ahead.

LXFlyer · 10-11-2011 8:17pm

trellheim wrote: »

Where is the M20 ?
I thought given past posts here that after N11/Newlands X that that was the No.2 priority but instead roads in Galway seem to have priority. Politics ?

To be honest with the sheer number of fatal and non-fatal accidents between Rathnew and Arklow it would be a travesty if this stretch of road were not prioritised from a safety perspective alone.

trellheim · 10-11-2011 8:30pm

I thought N20 just south of Buttevant was worse for accidents. Anyway I did note that N11 was higher priority, its more why Galway getting any priority at all given the funding envelope and the recent M18 and M6 completions.

rumour · 10-11-2011 10:52pm

What this boils down to is scrap capital spending and keep the current spending going.

The jobs lost are only private sector workers. They can go on the dole or emigrate.
So after three years of depressing news this crowd are just going to screw anybody not represented by a Union before they'll tackle the craziness going on in our Public Sector.

If your in anything related to capital expenditure in Ireland emigrate now and quickly.

Sadly Ireland is rapidly descending into a worse position than the 1980's.

murphaph · 11-11-2011 12:16am

rumour wrote: »

What this boils down to is scrap capital spending and keep the current spending going.

This is the long and short of it.

FF (though they should never be allowed in from the cold) actually seemed more likely to make cuts to welfare and PS pay than the present government. How sad we still have no government prepared to do the right thing for the country instead of worrying more about re-election.

strassenwo!f · 11-11-2011 2:09am

What this boils down to is scrap capital spending and keep the current spending going.

Careful now. Martin Cullen will not be happy if you do that. Those funds were ring-fenced.

BluntGuy · 11-11-2011 3:52am

One has to wonder where ministers get these fences. Clearly they're not getting a good deal.

Dan_Solo · 11-11-2011 1:02pm

rumour wrote: »

The jobs lost are only private sector workers. They can go on the dole or emigrate.

If the jobs going were 100% dependent on public funding they weren't particularly "private sector" in the first place, were they.

murphaph · 11-11-2011 1:24pm

Dan_Solo wrote: »

If the jobs going were 100% dependent on public funding they weren't particularly "private sector" in the first place, were they.

Metros are built ultimately with every penny coming from the private sector. If a state builds a metro, it is merely channeling private sector taxes into the project.

The main point being made is that the govt would rather protect public servants' pay and pensions than build infrastructure for the entire community.

Dan_Solo · 11-11-2011 2:55pm

murphaph wrote: »

Metros are built ultimately with every penny coming from the private sector. If a state builds a metro, it is merely channeling private sector taxes into the project.

You could say the same about the Gardai or hospitals. Building stuff we don't really need just to keep builders and developers living like the 90s is no more sensible than overstaffing or over-pensioning the public sector. It's just kicking the can down the road.

murphaph · 12-11-2011 6:24pm

Dan_Solo wrote: »

You could say the same about the Gardai or hospitals. Building stuff we don't really need just to keep builders and developers living like the 90s is no more sensible than overstaffing or over-pensioning the public sector. It's just kicking the can down the road.

The bit in bold is what I don't agree with.

I couldn't care less if the whole thing was contracted out to a foreign firm with their own labour and not a single Irish bricky laid a block-Dublin just needs some decent infrastructure. You appear to be attempting to infer something from comments never made by me.

Instead of borrowing for capital infrastructure that we can kick down the road to our children and their children, we're borrowing to pay current PS pay and SW. We'll then kick our nice little bundle of debt down the road to our kids instead. We are a disgrace of a country!

trellheim · 13-11-2011 9:40pm

I went off to look some numbers up on RSA website. According to http://www.rsa.ie/Documents/Road%20Safety/Crash%20Stats/2009_Road_Collision_Fact_Book.pdf

the N11 and the N20 have the same accident rate, .10 per million vehicle km.

I didn't know this but the N16 is the one with the highest accident rate, at 0.18 per million.

robd · 14-11-2011 1:04pm

murphaph wrote: »

Instead of borrowing for capital infrastructure that we can kick down the road to our children and their children, we're borrowing to pay current PS pay and SW. We'll then kick our nice little bundle of debt down the road to our kids instead. We are a disgrace of a country!

Public pensions is certainly a problem, particularly given most people of that age benefitted from the property boom by cheaper housing before it and being able to sell during it if they wished. They're not mortgaged like most of working age.

With regard to pay I think its more complex that that. Pay was already cut for public sector workers. There's a freeze on new recruitment which means a lot of them are doing more work. There's only so much you can squeeze without an all out strike. Essentially there has to be balance. Also, their pay could well be cut yet, thus not this year.

Cutting is all about going for the easiest options. Future infrastructure and pension reserve funds are easy options. Doesn't matter what country you're in or who's in power the decision will be the same.

Aidan1 · 16-11-2011 10:58am

Also, their pay could well be cut yet, thus not this year.

If the €18bn odd gap between income and expenditure is to be bridged, it will have to be, and soon - probably next year. How it happens is pure political theatre - everything else has to be cut before the Govt can go after (in this order), public sector pay, social welfare, and the State pension.

All of that assumes that the euro crisis is resolved - if not we could end up in a situation where we have to make that volume of cuts in a single year. There's also the issue of risk management - if the State were to commit to a large multiannual contractual arrangement that it couldn't back out of without paying out under huge penalty clauses were the crap to really hit the fan, it'd be less than ideal.

I wouldn't give up on either MN or DU yet - in a year or two, if our costs of borrowing come down, and the global economy is more stable, MN could proceed quite quickly. It might be a 4 year plan, but it could be amended in any annual budgetary process (and probably will be).

saywhatyousee · 20-11-2011 12:47am

trellheim wrote: »

I didn't know this but the N16 is the one with the highest accident rate, at 0.18 per million.

Did you ever travel the road?It is probaly the worst N road in the country

Full Capital Expenditure Plan 2012 - 2016

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