Time to use our blocks when it comes to PPP projects.

The discovery that something called a PPP can delay the opening of a Wexford school is for many the first introduction to the a different way that the state often gets important projects built. It’s likely that soon other concepts might come on the radar, DFBO and VFM.

We don’t have a state construction company. To get anything built in Ireland involves tenders, competitions and time as the private sector bids for work. States could borrow at a lower rate than the private sector. Government departments like education, transport or environment had a construction section, many of the others dealt with the OPW.  So where did the idea for a PPP come from and how could it be better?

We’ve got to go back to the 1980’s and the politics of small government. Involving the private sector in delivering social services and getting it to share the risk and presumably when it worked well, they shared the profits. 

This might mean that it is financed privately or as in the case of Carillion in Wexford, they not only financed but designed, built it and operated the building, or so they planned until the parent company collapsed. Under the conventional construction scheme that we’re all familiar with, the state owns the asset. Not so under a PPP. The company owns the asset (unless it goes to the wall) and the state leases it over a long term contract. The company has privately raised the finance to build and pays off its loan from the rent it receives over the time period of the lease. Part of the contract usually means that the construction not only is responsible for leasing the asset but also can use the asset to make money. I know one school principal in Co Wexford who tells me that when July comes around the company that has the PPP contract has the right to take over his school to use it as it so wishes until the Summer holidays end. That’s what DFBO means.

So in the UK schools built under PPP’s can be used at holiday time to hold conferences. Many in Ireland rightly see just an asset. The logic behind the build has not been explained.

Why is the system of construction attractive? Simply because it allows projects to go ahead that don’t show up on the states accounts for some time.  When the Wexford Loreto school got the go ahead to build, the state was broke. A school was long promised. You can’t blame the local minister for wanting to sort out a long standing local problem.

But it was a system that has served its purpose. The PPP project might be useful in building road building as it has in the past delivered projects on time. The case of GAMA workers in the past in Cork might raise questions as to how in one case this target was met. However O’Deveeny Gardens in Dublin was a collapsed social housing PPP that cost time and money. Risk is priced into PPP scheme’s for a reason, the reason is that it is real.

Let’s get back to VFM, value for money.  When Fianna Fail first brought in PPP’s the initial value for a basket of 5 schools was about €61M, the tender was advertised at about €69M and the deal done about a year later at almost €80M. Poor management of their own scheme put the taxpayer on the hook for a sum that could have delivered more schools if spent conventionally.

So when it comes to building social infrastructure it’s time to park the idea of PPP projects. Let’s get back to building under the supervision of a government department lest the department lose the expertise of actually how you go about building and subsequently having to solely rely on PPP.

Repeal the 8th will be a wait.

Without a doubt Michéal Martin’s intervention on abortion has moved the debate much further than many in government may have wished. Martin’s speech didn’t just catch his own TD’s unawares, it caught Leo Varadkar off guard.

Dr Varadkar is now over 6 months in the Taosieach’s job.  The honeymoon is well over now although it seems Leo and his supporters don’t think so.  The wheels may well be coming off the cart slowly but surely. Leo has spent the last 9 months selling us an image of him as modern, progressive and hip, but not cool. He’s comfortable with technology and fellow national leaders. But there’s more to politics than wearing fancy socks with Justin Trudeau and standing in front of a camera for a vlog.

This week will jolt Leo. Michéal Martin has out maneuvered Leo as Dr Varadkar prefers to be known. Since his elevation to Taoiseach, Dr Varadkar needs to move on from his previous role as commentator which grabbed the media attention.  It used to be the case that he and Simon Coveney would mark one another as they both circled around the prize that would be leadership of Fine Gael. Simon would be on Morning Ireland on one issue while Leo would nail down the News at one to give us his opinion. They are both now finding out that the view from the summit is quite different to the profile from a lower slope looking upwards.

And so it is that abortion can now be added to Brexit. We all know something has been proposed but the detail has yet to be worked out.  The Dail is simply listening to speeches in response to the All party committee’s report.

Legislation will have to be agreed by the Government and then put to the Oireachtas to provide for a referendum.  There’s lots of TD’s say they want a referendum. But what will be on the ballot paper? Will we have the option to repeal? Will the public be told the laws that will be enacted in the event of a referendum to repeal?  Will the government propose their own amendment of the 8^th to provide for abortion in line with the committee’s proposals and write those into the constitution? The Dail will also have to pass legislation either way but can that legislation get through the Oireachtas?

There’s a glimpse of what is going on in the Taoiseachs mind this week. It slipped out in his statement on the Kerry Babies.  He said that because he was too young the scandal had to be explained to him recently.  The Kerry Babies Scandal came right in the middle of that era of moving statues, opposing contraception and the 1^st Divorce Referendum.  How much more does the Taoiseach need to be told? Dr Varadkar does not sound very convincing when he tells us we all have to wait to find out what he thinks. This issue needs leadership, not drift. 

And that’s exactly what is happening, it’s drifting. Already the May date for the referendum is likely to be missed.

One of my earliest campaigns was in the summer of 1983, the only summer as a student that I didn’t go away to work.  The 8^th amendment was very different to any other referendum to the constitution. At the time, and indeed still very much today, abortion was outlawed by the 1861 act.  The referendum had nothing to do with preventing abortion in Ireland. It simply wasn’t available. The scare highlighted by the pro life amendment campaign was that the Dail would legislate for abortion on demand and that the courts couldn’t be trusted to uphold the 1861 act.  Those fears have never come to pass. Because, long before Trump, Brexiteer and populism playing on fears, the guys in PLAC were the daddy of them all when it came to scare tactics.  

I want to see the 8^th amendment removed from the constitution. I want doctors to able to protect a woman’s life in all circumstances. I also want to see that victims of rape are not obliged if pregnant to carry a pregnancy nor a woman expecting a child with a FFA.  It remains to be seen whether the referendum on offer will deal with these issues, because so far, nobody knows what the cabinet is considering.

And whoever explained the Kerry Babies to Dr Varadkar should sit him down and explain the first divorce poll. In the run in to voting it was going to pass, however the money was ploughed in by those on the right, only Labour campaigned as a party for it, FF and FG sat back and it was lost.  The reason why was because no legislation accompanied the referendum. The anti divorce scare at the time was of family farms being awarded to former wives in the court.

Dr Varadkar may well be taking us down the same road over abortion, either wittingly or unwittingly. 

His tribute to the late Liam Cosgrave specifically highlighted that Mr Cosgrave was one of 2 cabinet members who opposed his own government on the issue of contraception. Are we about to see a 21^st century version of a Taoiseach undoing his own government’s proposals on social issues?

If so he may find the electorate not as understanding as they were 40 years ago.  

Could sugar beet be on its way back?

There’s many’s a long road without a turn. And so it is that this week the focus came back to sugar beet.  Almost 13 years after the lost crop was harvested, it might well be that we may soon see the crop return and a viable sugar industry re-established.

A meeting last week in Bunclody brought together farmers and the promoters of a project close to Castlefermot to see if there was an interest in the county in growing beet to supply the new plant.  The ending of national sugar quotas in the EU means that if a farmer wishes to grow a crop, then it’s a matter for them. There’s no intervention, no quota and no safety net now for many in agriculture.  Food security, which the EU was originally planned to ensure, is a thing of the past.

If there was a moment when that became clear to me, it was about 3 weeks before I became Mayor in 2010. I was sitting in an office in Brussels with an official from the EU Transport Commission and we were discussing funding for railways. Our local railway in South Wexford had withered because of the collapse of the beet industry.  While we discussed the economics of sugar production, the official, a personable German turned to me and asked me; “Why should the EU support the production of a spice?” I responded by telling him that it was not up to me to continue to make an argument which the beet industry and FF government had stopped making years ago. Instead the EU had a responsibility to shift freight in an environmentally sustainable way.

And what I said then matters even more today.  The world price of sugar is now much lower than it was 13 years ago. Any farmer hoping to grow beet will need to grow large volumes of it to make it worthwhile.  The average size of an Irish farm may not make for too many farmers taking up the offer as would have done so under the greencore regime.

South Wexford has unique soil which lends itself to tillage.  If sugar is to return, South Wexford may well see a renewed interest in beet growing.  One other advantage that South Wexford has is a railway line that took the crop each Autumn to be processed in Mallow. 

The sites at Mallow and Carlow remain the property of Greencore who want to see them develop for housing.  The proposed site at Castledermot is a distance from the rail network. The consumer price for sugar never dropped despite the production cost reductions since 2005. Sugar is enormously profitable as a result. The cheapest own brand of sugar here sells for €1/20 per Kg. In Britain or the north you can bulk buy 5Kg sacks for a little more than £3. That’s some mark up.  We import almost €550M worth of sugar a year. So there’s a good margin to be made for any operator but sugar will have to be sustainably harvested and transported to reduce CO2 emissions. Agriculture and transport are 2 of the worst offenders in Ireland when it comes to greenhouse gases.

Many may recall the frustration of being caught behind tractors pulling trailers of beet, beet falling off the back of trailers and mud and dirt on the road. So that’s why there is a need for the Department of Transport to engage with the operators to ensure that beet from Wexford is taken by rail to Carlow. It’d be useful if planning required either the laying of a spur line to the plant  or at least the building of a processing rail depot in Carlow from where beet can be hauled to the factory.

It’s not sustainable to haul beet by the truck load long distances, especially given the low price that farmers will get.  So just maybe it is a case of down but not beaten when it comes to our railway in South Wexford.  There may be just another twist in store for that line.