NRA chief wants to lay tarmac and think of Ireland

The NRA wants to bring cohesion to the national road plan, Peter Malone tells John McManus.

Two cardboard plaques went up on the wall of Peter Malone's office this week. They bear the names of the contracts signed by the National Roads Authority on Tuesday. One is for the Kinnegad to Kilbeggan motorway while the other is for the Kinsale Road interchange.

On the plaques is the date that work is due to start on the projects, the date that work will finish and the price of the contract. "It helps focus people," explains the NRA chairman, who will be three years in office this month.

The plaques are an idea borrowed from Bernard McNamara, the phenomenally successful builder, who is the NRA deputy chairman.

To Malone, they symbolise the change in culture that has come about at the NRA which, for many years, was synonymous with badly delayed and over-budget road programmes. "Last year, we brought in 15 or 16 projects on time, the majority on budget or under it," he explains. Later this month, the NRA will set out its project budgets for 2005 and Mr Malone is confident it will be another year of progress.

"It's about leadership," says the former Jurys Hotels chief executive. "I brought the business end of it and Bernard brought the building end of it. We have got better at delivery. We are far more professional. The knowledge we now have allows us to put more pressure on contractors," he says.

The single biggest development in this area has been the shift to design-and-build contracts. In the past, the NRA designed the roads and then contracted out the construction. Now the contractor is also responsible for design. "It puts more onus on the contractor and gives them an incentive to finish on time," he says

This is just one of the lessons learnt by the NRA, many of them the hard way: not least in its epic struggle to build a motorway through the Glen of the Downs, which came in 100 per cent over budget and 12 months late. The NRA is not the only one to have benefited from such experiences, believes Malone, who says the contractors have got more efficient and more aggressive in their pricing.

The changes at the NRA have been fundamental, he says. When he joined in 2002, the NRA, like other Government agencies, was subject to the vicissitudes of annual funding allocations.

"In my first year there was no increase in the budget, which surprised me as a businessman. I needed to know where I was going. The NRA is like a big ship. It's hard to start and hard to stop," he said.

He made representations to the then minister for transport, Séamus Brennan, and his counterpart in Finance, Charlie McCreevy. They responded with a five-year €6.7 billion funding envelope for 2004 through 2009. In addition, the NRA was given approval to raise another €1.15 billion through public private partnerships (PPPs). "It was the first time that I know of that the Government made a five-year commitment."

The NRA has now got the go-ahead to prepare a plafor 2009 to 2014. But the funds are not ring-fenced and must come out of the 10-year envelope being negotiated by the Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen. "The figure is not set, but I have no reason to believe that we will not get the money, and would be disappointed if it's less than €7 billion," says Malone.

The retirement last year of chief executive Michael Tobin has facilitated further change. "The board felt that, to drive the NRA forward, we needed a new style of leadership. I got the Government to agree to a wage package to attract the right candidate.

"I made the point that with the agency planing to spend between €8 billion and €10 billion, it must be led by someone really experienced."

The new chief executive, Fred Barry, joins in April from Jacobs Engineering Ireland, where he is managing director. His salary has not been disclosed but it is commensurate with the package agreed for the head of the new Health Service Executive, which was reported to be €330,000 plus a 20 per cent bonus.

The last three years have not been without frustrations, says Malone, the most significant of which has been the lack of support for the transformation of the NRA from a funding agency to a delivery agency.

This was one of the main recommendations of a strategic review of the NRA carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2003.

According to Malone, it is not generally known that once a contract has been signed with a contractor, the running of the job is handed over by the NRA to the relevant local authority. Although the NRA remains involved and eventually comes back into the frame at the end to pay the bill, it does not run the project.

"We are not involved day-to-day but we still get blamed for everything," he says. More importantly, this approach encourages the lack of joined-up thinking that has bedevilled infrastructural development and the roads programme in particular.

"In the roads business, everybody thinks of their own patch, My remit is to think of Ireland," he says.

Ideally, the NRA would like complete control of projects such as it enjoys with PPPs, like the construction of the Kilcock to Kinnegad motorway. The NRA is seen to have struck a very favourable deal with a consortium of banks and the construction firm, SIAC, to build the road.

Despite the plaudits paid over the Kilcock-Kinnegad deal, the jury is still very much out over PPPs, with no firm evidence that the approach is cheaper in the long run than direct funding by the State.

Malone neatly sidesteps the issue, pointing out that it is a good deal and that more good deals could be struck if investors had confidence. This allows a neat segue into his other bugbear - the failure of the silent majority to speak up in favour of contentious road projects.

The delay to the final section of the M50 due to court appeals by conservationists who want the ruined medieval castle at Carrickmines preserved is a case in point.

"The huge silent majority want the Carrickmines [ interchange] opened, but we do not hear from them," he says.

"Once it's open, people are going to say it's fantastic, but they are not prepared to stand up and say it now," he argues. Similar problems at Glen of the Downs still rankle.

"I meet lots of people now who say what was all the fuss about. The eco-warriors did more damage. There is still some of their rubbish left in the trees," he says.

By and large, the NRA gets a bad press in this regard, argues Malone. "We are doing more for archaeology than anyone else. I defy anyone to say that we are not. This country is full of medieval sites, it is full of history. If there is going to be progress someone is going to lose out."

FACTFILE

Name: Peter Malone.

Age: 60.

Birth: Originally from Dundalk.

Education: St Mary's College, Dundalk, and Shannon College of Hotel Management.

Family: Married to Mary. Three daughters: Chanel, Aislinn and Clara.

Career: Since retiring as CEO of Jury Doyle Hotel Group five years ago he has taken up a number of appointments, including chairmanship of the National Roads Authority, Hibernian Group, CBRE Gunne and the Business Tourism Forum. He remains a director of Jurys Doyle Hotel Group and Ulster Bank.

Why is he in the news? He is starting his fourth year as chairman of the NRA which is shortly to announce its 2005 grants and is preparing its 2009 to 2014 investment programme.