The contract for developing the now-scrapped IT programme to manage trains across the rail network was awarded to a company that had never previously delivered such a system and did not own the intellectual property involved, Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien has said.
“That was crazy,” he told the Oireachtas Transport Committee at a hearing on Thursday.
The Minister said that the procurement arrangements for the information technology programme – known as a traffic management system – was fundamentally where the problems began.
On July 17th last, Irish Rail terminated the contract with Spanish technology company Indra for developing the traffic management system. The project was several years behind schedule and had run significantly over budget.
The State-owned rail company had earlier written down by €50 million the value of its investment in an overall new national train control centre, largely due to problems associated with the traffic management system.
The chairman of the Oireachtas Transport Committee, Michael Murphy of Fine Gael, asked the Minister whether in light of the experience of the traffic management system he had confidence in governance arrangements at Irish Rail.
“Would you commit to a review of the governance structures? Surely this raises serious questions about oversight in Irish Rail and serious questions for the National Transport Authority as well,” Murphy said.
O’Brien replied: “I would agree with you. And that is part of our work programme.
“The IT system, I think it goes back to the awarding of the contract. It appears to me ...it was awarded to a company that had not delivered a system and did not own the IP (intellectual property). That is crazy. I think the procurement was fundamentally where the issue was. And that is being addressed very seriously. I take my responsibilities in managing the people’s money for investment [seriously] and this will be dealt with.”
The Minister said he was waiting for advice from the National Transport Authority on how to proceed.
“This project is needed for efficiency across our train services,” he said.
O’Brien said he was “comfortable with the governance arrangements in place right now”. However, he said there were “absolute learnings that have to be made”.
The Minister said there were no issues with another large-scale technology project being developed by Indra, the new contactless system for buying tickets for buses, rail and Luas.
Indra, in a statement to The Irish Times earlier this week, said its traffic management system had been successfully deployed and was “operating in countries including Spain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Lithuania, all of which have repeatedly expressed confidence in Indra’s technology”.
“The system contributes to safer, more efficient and increasingly digitalised railway operations. Indra Group is also implementing its traffic management system technology in Estonia as part of the modernisation of the country’s rail network.”
Indra, previously, had blamed Irish Rail for how it has handled the project. It said the State company had relied too heavily on external advisers.
Indra also said that critical knowledge about the unique characteristics and limitations of the Irish Rail network had neither been comprehensively documented nor systematically shared with the project team. It said key Irish Rail personnel who would use the planned system had not been actively involved in the project until its fifth year.