NTA writes off €1.5m spent on failed IT projects, including abandoned digital Leap Card plans

Darragh Mc Donagh

The National Transport Authority (NTA) has written off almost €1.5 million in respect of failed IT projects in the past five years, including abandoned plans for a virtual Leap Card.

It follows the revelation that Iarnród Éireann had written off €50 million that it had spent on a new IT system for monitoring and managing rail traffic, which was subsequently abandoned.

The NTA is the approving body for capital spending on IT systems by Iarnród Éireann.

It has now emerged that the agency itself has also written off a seven-figure sum on IT projects that were subsequently cancelled, abandoned or failed to go live.

Records provided to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín in response to a parliamentary question show that €1,448,718 was wasted on plans for a centralised TaxSaver solution between March 2020 and October 2022.

A further €42,918 was spent on plans for a virtual Leap Card that commuters could keep in their digital wallets between June and December 2023. However, this was cancelled after “feasible options were not deemed suitable”.

Less than four months later, a proposal for a virtual Leap Card was a finalist at the NTA’s Smarter Travel Student Awards, with the project declaring: “There is no reason why Transport for Ireland can’t roll out the technology to all commuters.”

The NTA appeared to disagree, however, as it found that technical requirements for Apple phones meant that the Leap Card could not have worked on these devices until ticketing programmes were upgraded.

This would have excluded commuters with Apple phones for at least 12 months, so senior management decided not to proceed with the project, according to the records provided to Mr Tóibín.

Plans for a centralised TaxSaver solution were commenced in March 2020 with an initial budget of over €4.6 million. More than 30% of this had been spent by October 2022, when a decision was made to abandon the project.

“Due to delivery delays, the ongoing viability of the project was questioned and, after executive review, the project was cancelled,” said the NTA.

This decision was taken because the Covid-19 pandemic had changed travel patterns, and the value offered by the scheme was reduced to a point where it was significantly less attractive for much of the target market, it added.

“There were no signs of a return to previous patterns of use and calls [were] made for a new approach that would more suit current and expected future hybrid working/travel arrangements,” the records read.

A decision was therefore made to cease work on the proposed centralised solution, and the NTA decided to focus on “more suitable alternatives” to meet changing transport needs.

Mr Tóibín said the latest revelations regarding write-offs on IT expenditure in the transport sector were symptomatic of “waste and incompetency”.

“This comes in the wake of the recent €50 million Irish Rail failed IT project – a major waste scandal that has simply just disappeared off the radar, seemingly without consequence,” he said.

“One part shows nearly €50,000 spent trying to get digital Leap Cards. We’re surely one of the last countries where you still have to carry the physical cards, but it still could not be modernised.

“This flagrant spending on what ends up as failed IT projects has to end. The citizen loses twice,” he added.