Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 March 2017
1072. Deputy Eamon Scanlon asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if there are other expenditures involved in the redesign, build and commissioning of the high containment laboratory at the Backweston facility in County Kildare that have not been provided. [13708/17]
View answerMy Department, in collaboration with the Office of Public Works, is currently developing a high containment laboratory at Backweston to enhance our National capability in the laboratory diagnosis of exotic viral diseases of farmed animals.
It was decided to undertake amelioration works on a pre-existing laboratory space to achieve the highest attainable international standard of bio-containment – the Australia-New Zealand BSL4 standard. This decision followed an outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease in the UK in 2007 which was associated with the escape of virus from the Pirbright laboratory facility.
Consequently, to address potential risk and have confidence that a building project would deliver a facility to the required certified standard the following steps were taken:- A US engineering firm (which specialises in building and retrofitting containment laboratories) was retained on contract to oversee the design, build and commissioning of the laboratory; their proposed building solution was implemented and tested in one part of the laboratory and the heat treatment and drainage system was redesigned. The total cost of this preparatory work was €954,080.
The tendered cost of the main building works was €4.9 million excluding VAT. However additional costs of €1.07m (broken down below) have accrued due to variations to the building contract as a result of specification or working method changes, or due to unforeseen circumstances. During the construction works an underlying issue in the fabric of the original building was discovered – this did not affect the stability of the structure but had the potential to compromise containment and required an engineering solution and was associated with project delays which cost €219,572. This is a highly specialised project, the first of its kind undertaken in Ireland, such that it was inevitable that some changes would be made during the building phase to ensure the required level of containment and building efficiency - these variations to bolster air-tightness and security and enhance integration with building controls amounted to €853,790 (ex. VAT).
