ON YOUR BIKE

Infamous €335k bike shed row rumbles on as former OPW Minister insists ‘I wasn’t responsible’

The Office of Public Works has been at the centre of three overspending controversies in recent weeks

• Political Correspondent

• Published: 16:51, 3 Oct 2024
• Updated: 16:51, 3 Oct 2024

THE former Minister of the OPW has launched a staunch defence of the under-fire State body which spent €335,000 on the Dail bike shed and insisted: “I wasn’t responsible for it.”

The Office of Public Works has been at the centre of three overspending controversies in recent weeks that have sparked fury from the public, also including the €1.4million security hut and modular homes costing €436,000 each.He told the Irish Sun: “It is easy in some respects to look at one or two projects but in the round government departments have delivered in terms of school building, in terms of roads, in terms of rail, in terms of investment in broadband, in terms of investment in our electricity grid.

“Over the last years we have transformed a country that had a population of three and a half million people to a country with a population of six million people.”

Ireland last had 3.5 million people in 1994, and when the Irish Sun highlighted that the projects the Minister boasted about were not done by the OPW, the Limerick TD defended the agency for the work that it does.

He said: “In respect to those, the Chairman of the OPW has outlined with regard to two of them the costs associated with them.