A spokesman for one of the companies that won the Iarnród Éireann CTC contract has rejected earlier criticisms at the enquiry into cost over runs at CIÉ. Charles Burch of Alstom, which took over the company Sasib, told the Oireachtas joint sub committee that the company was one of the leading signalling firms in the world.
Mr Burch said that there had been shortcomings with each of the building blocks required for a successful CTC project. Shortly after the project began, it emerged that Iarnród Éireann had different expectations to what Sasib understood they had contracted for.
Even by December 1999, some of the plans required for the 1997 project had still not been supplied by Iarnród Éireann.
Another Alstom spokesman said that they had never heard any questions about their offer from Iarnród Éireann engineers during the tendering process or even during the first year of the project.
Pier Prina Mello said that Sasib had believed that Iarnród Éireann had been trying to change the layout of their work, to adapt it to take account of the Esat cable contract.
Mr Mello said that laying the Esat contract should not have caused problems. He felt the problem lay in the way Iarnród Éireann had handled the two contracts.
Chris Fossey of Alstom said that the contract to install the mini CTC did not indicate that they were expected to plough in ESAT lines. He said that Iarnród Éireann should have asked the association for a price for ploughing in the ESAT cables, and told them that there were penalty clauses involved.
If they had done that, he said that the association could have assessed the situation properly. Instead, he said Iarnród Éireann has tried to fuse two totally separate contracts together. He said that there was an element of commercial naivety on behalf of Iarnród Éireann.
Mr Fossey said that, in his experience, it is very unusual for the price of a signalling system to go 100% over contract.
