Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s decision to spend €753,528 on a new entrance to a park has been derided as ‘just extortionate’ by a planning expert.
When people now enter Deer Park in Mount Merrion, they are greeted with 14 steps with hand rails and a ramp.
€700,862.50 was paid to a contractor for the work; while an additional €6,249.59 was spent on tree protection measures, as well as a further €4,932.30 on heritage sign design and manufacturing.
The park’s renovation was made to ensure greater accessibility but public procurement expert and UCD Assistant Professor Dr Emma McEvoy described the cost as “wildly excessive”.
“Let’s call it daor Deer Park. €750,000 for 14 steps,” she argued on Newstalk Breakfast.
“I know that does include additional work and the purpose of the contract was needed.
“The park was not accessible and we need to comply with our accessibility laws and we needed to remove the steps that were not fit for purpose.
“But €753,00 just seems extortionate.”
Dr McEvoy added that the council must have “lost the run of themselves” when they agreed to the contract.
“You would imagine that these things could have been done inhouse but perhaps considering there were additional measures that had to be taken into account,” she explained.
“Protection of heritage signs, tree protection, additional traffic signals that [meant] they needed to go to tender.
“They would have had to comply with a full suite of EU procurement legislation that requires a full competition being conducted and advertised.
“If you imagine that an open and fair competition was conducted - and I do see that it was open and conducted properly - then we would have had more competition in.”
'Really shocked'
Dr McEvoy continued that the council could simply have re-run the tender.
“The whole lot of it seems overpriced,” she said.
“[Why not] sit down and say, ‘Okay, these are the bids that we got in but it is unreasonable for us to pay this. Let’s cancel the competition, we are not obliged to go ahead with these contracts just because then came in’ - and redo it and change up the contract.
“I’m really shocked that they went ahead with it.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has been contacted for comment.
Main image A split of DLR council and a wad of banknotes. Pictures by: Alamy.com.
