A board will be appointed within days to oversee the re-tendering of the Cork event centre project, and draft terms of reference for its work have already been prepared, city councillors have been told.
The news comes just over two weeks after Cabinet approved the re-tendering of the entire project eight years after its sod was turned, but where a brick has yet to be laid.
The saga, which is being overseen by Cork City Council, has been dogged by price overruns and delays since BAM won the tender in 2014 for some €20m of public funding to help deliver a proposed 6,000-capacity venue on the former Beamish and Crawford site on South Main St.
Since then, the amount of pledged State funding has risen to €57m in 2021, with an additional €30m to €40m required now.
Given the scale of change in the funding model, the government was given legal advice that a truncated re-procurement process should now happen to ensure the State does not fall foul of EU procurement laws.
It was also suggested that a project development board be set up, led by the city council, to advance the new re-tendering process as quickly as possible.
At Monday’s November meeting of the city council, Labour councillor Peter Horgan asked the council’s new chief executive, Valerie O’Sullivan, if she would request a presentation on the latest delay for councillors from the Department of Local Government, and for details on the project development board.
The council’s assistant chief executive, Brian Geaney, said the department wrote to the council on October 31 outlining the details of the government decision and the next steps the council needed to take to begin the formation of the project development board, including identification of potential board members and drafting the terms of reference for the board.
“The council has since responded to the department with draft terms of reference and I expect these initial steps will be completed by the end of next week,” he said.
“Responsibility for the new process rests with the project development board and as such any briefings of locally elected members will need to be considered by the board, once it is established.”
Meanwhile, Social Democrats councillor Padraig Rice, a candidate in Cork South Central, was told at Monday’s meeting that the council has now spent €1.6m on the entire process — up from €1.5m in June 2023 — a spend he described as “outrageous”.
“This must surely now be one of the most expensive vacant sites — and one of the biggest white elephants — in the city,” he said.