This article is from page 18 of the 2012-11-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
SIX water and sewage projects have ended up costing Clare County Council almost € 8 million more than the tender price – according to figures release at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council.
Councillors last night agreed to allow a loan to be taken out by the local authority to cover the costs of price increases to projects which were carried out by contractors. These price increases brought about as a result of “extras” – or unforeseen elements which were discovered during the process of the six developments.
According to County Manager Tom Coughlan, these discrepancies in the final cost of projects were brought about under an old contract system, which allowed developers to charge more than the tender prices for reasons such as an increased cost of labour and materials.
The total price discrepancy for the six projects amounted to € 7.7 million which represented € 2,325,000 for the Feakle/Scariff/Quilty Sewage Schemes, € 1.5 million for the Newmarket on Fergus Scheme, € 1.3 million for a scheme at Gillogue, € 1 million for the Ennis Water Treatment Scheme, € 848,000 for the Lisdoonvarna/Ballyvaughan Waste Water Scheme and € 627,000 for the Clareville Scheme.
“The balances are for work which have already been done. The problem is that the tender which was accepted was substantially lower than the final price of the projects,” said County Manager Tom Coughlan.
“This happens especially where there are conditions which were not anticipated at the planning stage such as ground conditions.”
A number of councillors raised concerns over why these projects cost more than the original tender.
“People will be asking questions why these contracts were not scrutinised better to make sure that there were no holes in them for this sort of thing. We need to look at contracts in the future to make sure that this does not happen again. There must be a way to ensure that contracts cannot be hiked up after the fact like this,” said Cllr Michael Kelly (FF).
County Manager Tom Coughlan reiterated that the overspend was for six historic projects which were entered into under an old system of contracts which is no longer used.