Questions asked around what £200m spent on A5 actually did - while farmers are left paying the price - Jonathon Buckley
DUP Infrastructure Committee Chair Jonathan Buckley MLA has demanded full transparency from the Department for Infrastructure over almost £200 million spent on the A5 project, while no new road has been built and hundreds of farming families remain trapped in uncertainty.
Mr Buckley said: “Almost £200 million has now been spent on the A5 and not a single square inch of new tarmac has been laid. “Behind that extraordinary figure are hundreds of farmers and landowners whose lives and businesses have been placed in hiatus.
"Land has been vested and many are still waiting for compensation arising from the most recent vesting operation. “This project has been botched from the outset.
"The Department’s treatment of affected landowners has damaged relationships and eroded trust.
"Farmers cannot be expected to put their businesses on hold indefinitely while the Department lurches from one problem to another”. He added that at the Infrastructure Committee this week he ‘asked the Department’s Permanent Secretary for a detailed breakdown of how almost £200 million has been spent’.
"Remarkably, officials sitting before the Committee were unable to provide that breakdown and instead undertook to write to me,” he said. “That is deeply concerning. “If the chief executive of a private company appeared before their board having spent almost £200 million on a project without delivering the finished product, they would be expected to account for that expenditure in minute detail.
"Taxpayers deserve no less from senior public officials. “I look forward to receiving the Department’s detailed breakdown and I intend to scrutinise it carefully. “There must now be accountability for the money already spent, but there must also be a fundamental change in how the Department deals with the farming families along this route.
"They are not an inconvenience to be managed. These are people’s livelihoods. “After years of delay and mounting expenditure, farmers and taxpayers alike deserve straight answers,” he added.