Committee Rails Minister and Translink and calls for an Immediate Inquiry

At its meeting today, the Committee for Regional Development agreed that the Minister and senior Translink officials should appear before them to explain their failings with regards to the under-estimation of the Coleraine to Londonderry railway budget. The Committee also agreed to undertake an immediate inquiry into Translink procurement procedures and the Department’s seeming inability to budget for capital projects.

Recommending this action, Committee Chairperson, Mr Trevor Clarke MLA, said, “This shambles should never have been allowed to happen. It is evident that both the Minister and senior officials from Translink have either failed to recognise or ignored the lessons to be learned from earlier botched procurement exercises. They also seem to have ignored the recommendations of the Northern Ireland Assembly Public Accounts Committee’s report on the upgrade of the Belfast to Bangor Railway Line.

“This Committee has previously cautioned the Minister and Translink about the weaknesses of this procurement exercise, but, we appear to have been ignored.  We are unanimous that this will not happen again and that the Minister and Translink must be challenged on their inadequacies and the damage this bungled process may bring about and we are confident that the Committee’s inquiry will do that”.