McDOWELL THROWS COLD WATER ON RAFTING PLAN
THE proposed spending of €25million of council money on a white-water rafting centre in a former dock in Dublin, in the middle of a housing crisis, is a grotesque failure in management, Michael McDowell has claimed.
The senator has told Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien that he should move to instruct the council to withdraw the tender process for the leisure facility.
The former tánaiste also warned that the cost of the proposed plan would balloon out to €30million.
Mr McDowell was responding to the recent decision of Dublin City Council to seek a shortlist of contractors interested in building the controversial watersports facility between Custom House Dock and George’s Dock in the city’s International Financial Services Centre (IFSC).
Dublin city councillors voted in December 2019 to approve plans to build the rafting facility beside the CHQ building at a cost of €23million.
The tender listed the estimated value of the contract as €25million excluding Vat, which would represent a further increase in the cost of the project, which was initially tendered at €12 million.
The contract tender said the facility would compromise a white-water rafting course, swift water rescue training centre and a kayaking and canoe polo pool. However, fresh from his success in rescuing the Nubian statues of the Shelbourne Hotel, Mr McDowell has now trained his guns on the city council’s aquatic plans.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, he said: ‘The decision of Dublin City Council’s executive management to put out to tender a €30million construction contract for a white-water rafting facility at Custom House Dock is a political obscenity.’
This, he said, was especially the case, ‘given the context of the calamitous failure of the council to address the crisis of a housing shortage for many years.’
Mr McDowell said: ‘The threadbare excuse for this grotesque vanity project is that it is needed to train fire brigade personnel. That is absurd.’
Mr McDowell said: ‘I am calling on the Government and the Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien to withdraw the tender process and to indicate that there will be no funding to the council as long as
‘Grotesque vanity project’ ‘The mandarins will have to watch out’
the tender project is proceeding.’
He warned that already more than €1million has already been wasted on the project.
Mr McDowell has previously taken on such potential follies such as the infamous proposed ‘Bertie-bowl’ soccer stadium and the Bus Connects public transport plan.
A council source warned: ‘The mandarins will have to watch out if McDowell gets his teeth into Owen Keegan’s waterworld. McDowell has a long track record in taking out follies. The council officials should not be buying their water-skis any time soon,’ they said.