NTA gives a breakdown of €112,937,282 in funding after Cllr Flynn seeks transparency

— Clontarf to City Centre project amounts to 63% of the cost of projects finished in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Dublin City Council’s first transport committee meeting, now officially named the Mobility and Public Realm committee, included some well-expected theatrics from Cllr Mannix Flynn (independent) calling for transparency.

Cllr Flynn sparred with guest speakers, including the outgoing NTA CEO, Anne Graham, and deputy and soon-to-be interim CEO, Hugh Creegan.

Cllr Flynn is an artist, and he’s no stranger to the dramatics in the council chamber. The NTA guests were trying to explain nicely that the city council would actually have more details of its own expenditure than the NTA does, but committee chairperson Cllr Janet Horner (Greens) had to intervene as Cllr Flynn was demanding more detail without actually saying what exact detail he wanted.

It was kind of going around in circles was taking up all of the time when other committee members also wanted to ask questions.

Before it got heated (at around 1h 15mins into the meeting), Cllr Flynn asked for a breakdown of what money goes into projects and salaries — on this, the NTA releases funding allocations each year after it is allocated, which includes a breakdown of projects and staff funding. The breakdown of funding by council and project can be found in the spreadsheets for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

For Dublin City Council, this included an allocation of €49,875,000 in 2021, €52,810,000 in 2022, €59,850,000 in 2023 and €54,100,000 in 2024.

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The spreadsheets include the older ‘Sustainable Transport Measures Grants’ in 2021 and, after that, under the title ‘Active Travel Investment Grants’, although both include projects that were not just about active travel.

Some projects are listed over a number of years because these are funded over more than one year or, in some cases, because projects do not progress and funding is allocated again.

The funding allocation doesn’t correspond exactly to what was spent. As this website covered last year, some projects do not progress, including because of waiting for planning approval or issues with the plans or securing consultants or contractors.

Trying to add some extra light to the situation, the NTA wrote to the committee and provided it with a list of €112,937,282 in funding titled ‘Completed Projects 2022, 2023 & 2024 & associated costs’.

Hugh Creegan wrote to the committee and said: “At the meeting of the SPC [committe] held on 4th December, the NTA attendees, in response to a request from Cllr Mannix Flynn, undertook to provide information on grant funding to the Council by the NTA under the Active Travel Programme.”

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Breakdown of funding used by project type for projects finished in 2022, 2023 and 2024

(project type categorised by IrishCycle.com)

He added: “I attach a list of projects that have been completed over the last three years under the Active Travel Programme, with details of the funding provided by the NTA on those projects up to the end of November 2024.”

You can see the data the NTA provided on Google Sheets. It does not include staffing costs (listed in the allocation PDFs), smaller amounts for project planning and design work, or some larger projects that have yet to be finished.

Projects that still need to be finished include the €30+ million Royal Canal Greenway, work on which is still ongoing.

Cllr Flynn was contacted for comment on what details he was seeking and if he’s happy with the response.

Most expensive projects finished in 2022, 2023 and 2024