Now Leinster House revamp will run over €15m budget

THE Leinster House revamp is the latest Government project to be hit with cost overruns.

Kevin Boxer Moran, the Minister for the Office of Public Works, said that after taking a tour of the ongoing restoration project yesterday, he saw at first-hand a ‘level of work that wasn’t foreseen in the building’ and that he believed the cost would overrun its estimated €15million.

Mr Moran told the Oireachtas finance committee yesterday that he does ‘see it coming in higher than the €15million’. ‘How much I don’t know at this time because there is a level of work that wasn’t foreseen in the building,’ he said.

Mr Moran said some of this unforeseen work includes damage around some of the chimneys and the parts of the roof, adding: ‘It is a protected structure, so the work is somewhat time-consuming and costly.’

Maurice Buckley, chairman of the OPW, said: ‘Because we are dealing with a building form the 1750s... it was always clear there was going to be additional works or challenges technically as the project went on.’

And Mr Buckley said the reason they did not have an ‘accurate figure’ at the moment ‘is because the works aren’t complete’.

He said the chimneys were among infrastructure they ‘still have to fully investigate’, and when this part of the work is completed they ‘will have a timescale and we will know the cost’.