Poor value for money, inflation and delays may be the hallmarks of the National Development Plan at mid-term, but the Government must not cut spending, particularly on roads, business leaders and economists maintained yesterday.
Addressing a conference on the NDP in Westport, Co Mayo, Mr Jim Power, group chief economist with Friends First, said the Republic still had Third World roads, alongside struggling education and health services.
For the remainder of the NDP, expensive infrastructure programmes should be delivered only according to what was desirable and what represented value for money, Mr Power said. In this respect, he was glad to note "the Bertie Bowl had been given a decent Christian burial".
He said that only 30km of the planned 711km of inter-urban roads had been completed by June of this year, but he acknowledged that this figure may not be indicative, as another 600km of roads were at the planning stages or in construction. Large road projects are typically two to three years in the planning stages, and delivery of more projects might be expected later in the plan.
Mr Power said progress on waste management infrastructure was "ridiculously slow", while he said he had been unable to "even get the figures" from the Government relating to the deployment of broadband telecommunications access in the regions
Mr Redmond O'Donoghue, group chief executive officer of Waterford Wedgwood, also criticised the pace of new road development. He said traffic gridlock, energy waste, and poor infrastructure were damaging industry and costing the same levels of money which should be spent to upgrade these services.
"We can decide whether we want to pay for it on a drip-by-drip basis or we can make the investment that effects a quantum leap for our physical infrastructure over the next five years or so."
Economist Mr Jim O'Leary, of the National University of Ireland Maynooth, said a funding gap of about €11 billion was emerging in the plan's economic and social infrastructure elements alone.
He said part of this gap could be bridged by stricter controls, such as fixed-price contracts for road-building and fewer changes to project scope and design.
While public-private partnership ventures had been suggested by Government, Mr O'Leary said the State's lack of experience or progress in this area meant it was unlikely to secure more than the €2.5 billion already forecast. He concluded that the only real prospect of completing the programme was in securing additional funding from the Exchequer.
The chief executive of the National Roads Authority, Mr Michael Tobin, said it would be helpful if the authority was given multi-annual budgets over the coming years, to allow "certainty" with the multi-annual projects being developed. It would also be helpful if the NDP was extended a few years, he added.
Independent TD for Sligo-Leitrim, Ms Marian Harkin, said the plan was "a fraud" in its commitment to balanced regional development. She instanced the lack of motorways in the northwest and in a region from Galway to Dundalk as an example of the many inequalities in the plan, and was supported by a number of speakers who complained of the conditions of road access to the conference venue, Westport. Mr Ian Lumley, heritage officer with An Taisce, also criticised the roads programme which, he said, "promoted car-dependent lifestyles".