THE COST OF fencing along the Grand Canal in Dublin, erected to stop homeless people seeking asylum from pitching tents along the banks, cost over three times more in the first month than what Waterways Ireland told politicians, The Journal can reveal.
The agency, which receives funding from the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, spent €117,845 on the installation, maintenance and hiring of fencing between May and the first week of June.
The Waterways Ireland CEO told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in July that his agency had given the direction to erect the fencing along the canal for ‘health and safety’ reasons.
Documents, released under an Access to Information on the Environment request, reveal the enormous costs that Waterways Ireland were accruing in its attempt to keep the area in Dublin’s city centre clear of tents.
The cost is much higher than what Éanna Rowe, the agency’s operations controller, told the PAC in July during a meeting to discuss its annual financial statements for 2022.
During the meeting he said the total associated costs with removing the tents and erecting the fencing was “running at €125,000″. Asked to clarify how much was spent on fencing alone, Rowe said €45,000 had been spent “so far”, between May and June.
This is over €72,000 less than what the actual cost was. At the time of the meeting, the fences had been in place along the canal for eight weeks.
Rowe claimed that the cost was charged at a weekly rate, working out to roughly €5,600 per week to rent the fences. He said that fee was billed monthly to Waterways Ireland and was ongoing.
Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe put to Crowe that “we are now incurring the cost and we are losing the amenity [of the canal]“. Rowe said he accepted McAuliffe’s point, adding that it was Waterways Ireland’s “ambition” to accelerate plans to remove the fencing.
Asked in July if the figures provided to PAC were correct, a spokesperson for Waterways Ireland insisted to The Journal that the costs provided to the committee were accurate.
“[The] figures provided to PAC were correct,” the spokesperson said.
Asked to clarify the remarks in the context of the documents released to The Journal, a spokesperson for Waterways Ireland yesterday said the figure given to politicians was an “estimate”.
More than two months after the July PAC meeting, Waterways Ireland sent a correction of its statements to the committee, claiming that – as of 6 August – the cost to erect the fencing was €140,206.
The agency also informed the committee, on the same date, that the associated costs for removing the tents and erecting fencing totalled €303,096, as of 6 August.
This included additional fencing invoices, totalling €83,837, and a €79,053 fee for the removal of tents and cleaning up, the spokesperson clarified yesterday.
But the invoice cost document reveals that the amended figures were also incorrect – as the cost of maintaining, hiring and installing the fences alone had surpassed €210,000 by the end of June.
A member of the Take Back Our Space campaign – a coalition of social justice groups that were demanding that the fences be taken down – Brigid Purcell told The Journal that the fencing made the canal “unusable for an entire summer, caused huge pain and suffering for the most vulnerable people in our society and it has cost the taxpayer an absolute fortune”.
In May, shortly after Simon Harris began his term as Taoiseach, three multi-agency operations took place to clear tents from the Grand Canal in quick succession after people who were seeking asylum in Ireland had arrived at the location.
Many had arrived to the location as the State had failed to provide them with suitable accommodation.
The Journal sought clarity from Waterways Ireland in July as, just days after Crowe told politicians the €45,000 price tag for the fences, the agency said in a statement to this publication that costs had “risen” to €30,000 per week, which cast doubt on the €45,000 figure.
The spokesperson said in a follow-up statement on 20 July that the agency had accrued additional costs as some fences along the canal had to be re-erected or replaced due to damages.
But the new documents reveal that that milestone had already been reached in June, as €92,390 was spent on hiring and maintaining the fencing that month. No invoices for the month of the July were provided.
The Journal has sought clarity, on a number of occasions, from Waterways Ireland about when exactly did the high weekly rate began – despite documents now revealing it was a cheaper cost than the first month.
Social Democrats Dublin North Central TD Gary Gannon, who expressed outrage over the fences being initially erected, told The Journal: “I think any public body that sought to mislead public representatives with numbers that weren’t correct needs to be held to account.”
He said that it was evident, at the time and now, that removing the tents and installing the fences was not the right thing for Waterways Ireland to do as people seeking asylum “with no where else to go, would inevitably go towards the first source of protection”.
He added that Waterways Ireland had ‘taken a sledgehammer’ to the issue.
The politician said he believes Waterways Ireland and other NGOs were pressured by Taoiseach Simon Harris to take action against the tents along the canal and erecting the fencing.
Plans for these operations, outlining the role of each agency, which were drafted by Waterways Ireland were also among the documents released to The Journal.
The Taoiseach’s department’s only role was to manage communications and press releases about the operation, the documents say.
When the fences were erected, a spokesperson for Waterways Ireland acknowledged that the situation was “not ideal, but it is necessary to mitigate risk to health and safety which is our over-riding concern”.
Gannon said it was “shameful” that Waterways Ireland “essentially sought to impose a massive cost on the taxpayer, remove a public amenity from the citizens of Dublin and all the while not being transparent with costs”.
“I think that’s something that we can’t accept,” he said.
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