The managing director of Iarnrod Eireann was in favour of resuming the stalled mini-CTC rail signalling system at a revised cost of £58 million - more than four times the original £14 million budget.
Mr Joe Meagher voted for the proposal at board level earlier this year but the move was blocked by Iarnrod Eireann's parent company, CIE.
The system, begun in 1997 with a two-year deadline, is still not complete, and Mr Meagher told the Oireachtas subcommittee inquiry yesterday he did not know what the eventual cost would be.
But he insisted under repeated questioning that he had done his job correctly in relation to the project, considering the problems that had arisen. Earlier the internal monitoring procedures used by CIE to guard against delays and cost overruns in major new works were questioned when the subcommittee heard from Mr Tony Dermody of the Programmes and Projects Department.
Mr Dermody said he did not make physical checks on the progress of projects. He accepted information from Iarnrod Eireann personnel in charge of projects on the basis of trust and would have had to "walk every railway line" if he wanted to satisfy himself to a greater extent.
"Perhaps there should be some process by which I should investigate further but no such process exists," he said.
Mr Michael Downes, the CIE internal auditor, said he mainly checked that invoices and payments had proper authorisation. While he carried out some on-site inspections on new works, he did not visit any mini-CTC installation because no one raised any alarm about it.
The inquiry heard that the Department of Public Enterprise was aware of a delay in the project as far back as December 1996 and knew in April 1997 that the cost had gone from £14 million to £16.2 million. Mr John Fearon, assistant secretary at the Department, stopped funding for it at the end of 1999 when CIE submitted a claim to draw down an instalment of £3.9 million in European Union funding.
He said he did not act before that because he understood the difficulties with the project were relatively minor and that Iarnrod Eireann would absorb any additional costs.
According to Mr Aidan Dunning, assistant secretary at the Department of Finance, there were "quite a number" of EU-funded projects in the State going over budget. "It wouldn't be unusual that there would be both cost and time overruns," he said.
The inquiry also heard that the only section of the mini-CTC fully operational, a level crossing at Knockcroghery on the Roscommon-Athlone line, took seven years to implement.
Mr Vincent Brennan, county engineer with Roscommon County Council, said the council began negotiating with Iarnrod Eireann in 1993 to move the level crossing as part of a package of road safety improvements.
The inquiry heard that the crossing was first activated in June last year but the very next day a fault caused a complete system shutdown. By mid-November, faults had disrupted the system on 21 separate dates.