Local authority paid €10.5m to advisers

A SOUTH Dublin local authority spent almost €10.5 million on consultants for capital projects in 2009, new figures have shown.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council paid almost €1.6 million to RPS Consulting Engineers for work carried out on 12 projects, including €327,000 for work in preparation of the new town zoning for Cherrywood, off the M50.

Engineers McCarthy Hyder Consultants earned almost €900,000 for work they carried out on a single project, the Shanganagh to Bray sewerage scheme.

Almost €1.8 million has been paid to engineers, architects and other consultants for the planned library headquarters at Moran Park, Dún Laoghaire, including almost €620,000 to architects Carr, Cotter Naessens.

The projects on which the consultancy firms worked included road developments, sewerage systems and housing.

Social and affordable housing to be developed by the council off the Enniskerry Road, at the foot of the Dublin mountains, has cost more than €750,000 so far in consultants’ fees.

Some 155 units are to be built, but the project is awaiting approval from the Department of the Environment before it can be put out to tender.

More than €700,000 was paid to consultants in connection with Cherrywood and the Cherrywood Science and Technology Park. More than €120,000 of this was paid by the council in legal fees.

The council had taken its partner in the project, Liam Carroll’s Zoe Group, to the High Court before negotiating a deal to separate the council’s share in the park from the developers’ share.

People Before Profit Alliance councillor Richard Boyd Barrett said it was very alarming that more than €700,000 had been spent on Cherrywood.

He also said fees paid out to develop the central library in Moran’s Park were astonishing.

A spokeswoman for the council said consultancy firms were used to supplement the resources of council professional staff to meet the capital works programmes in a number of areas.

“These payments should be seen in the context of an overall expenditure in 2009 of over €400 million,” she said.

“If outside professional expertise had not been sought to progress a number of important schemes,” she added, “the process of delivering major service and infrastructural projects to the community would have slowed down considerably.”