More than 150 civil servants were moved into a new Government office block in Roscommon over a year ago even though there were outstanding defects throughout the building, including issues involving fire safety, The Irish Times has learned.
The building, located on the town's western edge, has not yet been handed over to the State, 15 months after the Office of Public Works (OPW) was informed by the developers, Marmac Design and Build Ltd, that it was ready for occupation.
A source has told The Irish Times that the "snags list" runs to 400 pages and is "as thick as the Roscommon telephone book".
An official spokesman for the OPW described it as a "fairly beefy" document that was still being worked through.
In a statement, the OPW said a "large number of snags remained to be dealt with".
These related to "a wide range of issues, including windows, disabled access, electrical and mechanical installation, flooring, material substitution and minor building leaks".
The statement, issued in response to queries from The Irish Times, said that Marmac had given the OPW "categorical assurances that all outstanding snags will be rectified". The firm was "currently attending to them" and "substantial progress" had been made, it said.
One of the first snags to be attended to was leaking in the basement of the 6,500 sq m (70,000 sq ft) building, where all records of births, marriages and deaths since 1860 were to be stored by the Department of Health's General Registry Office.
The building was occupied initially by the Department of Health in April 2005 after receipt of a practical completion certificate from Marmac, a company set up by McLoughlin Builders Ltd of Longford to carry out the €9.5 million "design and build" contract.
Most of the 170 staff now in the building are from the departments of Health and Agriculture, with smaller numbers from the Revenue Commissioners and the departments of Education and Social and Family Affairs. A section of the Land Registry is also due to move in.
The mainly three-storey office block was the last to be built under an early decentralisation programme.
Its foundation stone was laid in November 2003 by the then minister for finance, Charlie McCreevy, a month before he announced the Government's current decentralisation programme.
The building, tucked behind the Sisters of Mercy secondary school in Roscommon, was designed by Dublin-based Coady Partnership Architects. Under the "design and build" procurement rules, it is the builders who are in charge rather than the architects.
The OPW has confirmed that six firms tendered to build the office block. It is understood that Marmac's tender was substantially below the next lowest one - by some €3 million.
One source said given that the cost of the building was €9.5 million, the company had "under-priced the job".
The building was "riddled with defects", another source said. He described the snags list, compiled by former OPW clerk of works Les Howard, as "phenomenal", saying it was about "five or six times" more extensive than on any other building built for the State.
When presented with the snags list, the builders argued that it was "an over-exaggeration" of the faults in the office block. However, the OPW responded by denying the firm its final staged payment until the defects were remedied.
In its formal statement, the OPW said it was "committed to quality in its buildings". It added: "Indeed, the independent review of the building by the OPW, following its stated completion by the developer, shows that we have taken our responsibilities in this matter very seriously."
John McMahon, principal officer in the OPW's projects division, told The Irish Times that the Roscommon office block was late being delivered and this "put on a certain pressure" to move staff in, leaving "residual issues" to be dealt with. "In hindsight, we shouldn't have taken it," he added.
Asked if the "design and build" procurement method left it open to such problems, OPW commissioner Clare McGrath said it had "worked for us, is working for us now" because it generally gave value for money and an element of choice in the design of buildings.
A spokesman for McLoughlin Builders Ltd confirmed that it "still has a presence on the site" and said it was "attending to snags", which was "the norm" for a new building in the defects liability period.
He denied that the extent of the snags found was unusually high.
