Government action needed to tackle Children’s Science Centre ‘debacle’ – report

By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association

The Public Accounts Committee has said urgent Government action is needed to bring the National Children’s Science Centre “debacle” to a definitive conclusion.

The Oireachtas committee, which scrutinises how taxpayers’ money is spent, published an “unprecedented” interim report about the project on Thursday.

The Office of Public Works (OPW) and the Irish Children’s Museum Limited (ICML) first entered into discussions to establish a science centre for children in Dublin city centre in 2003.

Over the last 23 years, more than €4 million of public funds has been spent on planning and legal costs, with further costs to be finalised.

The estimated cost of the project has risen from €14.3 million in 2003 to more than €70 million in 2024, which does not include a number of costs, including exhibition fit-out, the value of the Earlsfort Terrace site or operating costs.

This issue demanded somebody to cry stop, and I think in issuing this interim report that is what the committee is doing here

However, no Government department has accepted responsibility for sponsoring, funding or overseeing its delivery, no funding source has been agreed and the safeguards normally used on major projects have not been applied.

Despite this, as a result of previous legal proceedings the OPW is obliged to continue progressing the project, and work is under way to prepare for a tender process to be completed by the end of this year.

Chairman of the committee, Sinn Féin TD John Brady, described what has happened as a “debacle” and a “saga” that has “dragged on now for more than two decades”.

He said, “Every day that this situation continues, more money continues to be spent, despite there being no credible pathway to delivering the project”.

He said it was PAC’s conclusion that “an urgent political intervention is now required, and the Government cannot continue, in my view, to bury its head in the sand while public funds are exposed to mounting costs and increasing legal risk.”

The committee’s report recommended OPW and the Government “engage directly and as a matter of priority” with representatives of the National Children’s Science Centre, Brady said, “with a view to identifying a way forward for the project or a way to end any commitment to the project while minimising any cost to the state”.

He said it was his view “responsibility now rests” with the Government, in particular with Public Expenditure Minister, Jack Chambers, the Minister with responsibility for the OPW, Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran, adding “ultimately we cannot continue to ignore this massive and growing liability to the state”.

Leas-Cathaoirleach, Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe, said: “This issue demanded somebody to cry stop, and I think in issuing this interim report that is what the committee is doing here.”

The committee has recommended the Department of Public Expenditure and the OPW provide a progress update on the project in the next three months.

Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan took aim at the chairman of the OPW, and said he believed it was a “shared view” that the committee felt “fobbed off” by John Conlon’s evidence.

“This is not a problem with his making, but it is one that has landed on his desk,” Geoghegan acknowledged, but said in his “public utterances it sounds like this project is going nowhere”, but “privately, really, there’s a process that is proceeding, under way, there’s no delays to it.”

“If ever we were at the end of the road towards making a decision, it is now,” he continued and said someone has to “come out and tell the public” what is happening with the taxpayer money that’s owed under the agreement and which could be owed if the agreement is not fulfilled.

He acknowledged the charity has “laudable goals” but said “we need to appeal to that better sense of their mission as we get to the finality of this process”.

The Social Democrats TD Aidan Farrelly said: “It’s one of those old situations where every stakeholder needs to get in a room and not leave that room until there is a solution that everybody is OK with.”

“That’s what we’ve been calling for for many months now here in the Public Accounts Committee to bring everybody to one place. This report, I think, will do a lot of that work for us now.”