Social Democrats spread “fake news story” of public transport ticketing system costing billions

A claim made by the Social Democrats that a new ticketing system for public transport across Ireland would cost billions of euro has been strongly disputed by the National Transport Authority, but the political party has kept the misleading tweet online and doubled down by distributing a leaflet with the claim.

The project includes replacing ticket machines, platform/bus validators, train station fare gates, and the computer hardware and software in the background to make it all work.

A spokesperson for the National Transport Authority said: “The suggestion that spending of €2.7bn on Next Generation Ticketing has been approved is misleading.”

“That figure originated in tender documents published by us in 2020 and represents nothing more than a notional potential maximum spend on Next Generation Ticketing over the course of 20 years or so,” the spokesperson said.

The tender documents included an “estimated value excluding VAT” of €243m and “a maximum value of the framework agreement” of €2.762bn.

The “notional” value could, for example, include technology not yet imagined or for projects much wider in scope, but the framework is also not a totally binding contract. IrishCycle.com understands that the NTA has dropped out of a number of framework processes that were far short of reaching their total estimated value, never mind the total notional value.

The NTA said that no such sum of €2.7 billion has been approved by the NTA board, the Department of Transport, or the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. What has been approved under the Framework Agreement, which was tender for, is a fraction of the multi-billion euro figure.

An NTA spokesperson said: “The first call off contract under this Framework Agreement is to roll out and support for 10 years, Next Generation Ticketing on a phased basis, primarily in the GDA, and the contract value is €73m in Capital Expenditure and €76m in Fixed Operating Costs. Additional variable costs will ensue based on a cost per transaction once live.”

The NTA told this website that “€149m is the only money that has been approved to date for Next Generation Ticketing”. This is likely to rise. Spanish company Indra, which secured the winning bid for a framework agreement for the new ticketing system, said that the framework was “a significant contract worth hundreds of millions of euros over the potential term of the contract”.

The NTA said that further business cases are being considered for what it termed as the “full national rollout of the ticketing system” and will “result in additional call off contracts being awarded under the Framework”.

Indra, which also works in the areas of defence and aerospace, won the single-vendor framework contract after beating off competition from the other two short-listed vendors, Cubic Transportation Systems and Conduent Transportation.

‘Mobility Payments’, a payments industry news website, reported in April that “Indra is believed to have submitted a substantially lower bid than its rivals” and called it a “very low price bid”.

The recent source of the billions claim seems to have been a Daily Mail article published on the newspaper’s Extra.ie website under the headline: “€2.7bn – The astonishing cost just to upgrade public transport ticketing system to contactless”.

The authority told the newspaper that the Framework Agreement it awarded to Indra is worth €243 million over ten years. However, this figure has been updated to the lower €149m figure as approved to date.

Not only is the billions figure off the mark of the actual cost but the idea that the new system is just an upgrade to allow contactless bank card and phone payments can also be seen as misleading as the framework includes not just an add-on to existing ticketing. It is an extensive new ticketing system that includes backend computer services to connect not just to accept payments but also to manage subscriptions, such as linking cards to students or other discounts.

The ticketing systems on Dublin Bus vehicles, for example, is seen as already well past its sell-by date and was just about able to be compatible with Leap cards. The move to a new ticketing system will also require

Despite the issue with the €2.7bn figure being explained by an NTA spokesperson who is quoted in the article, the Irish Daily Mail repeatedly uses the €2.7bn figure throughout the article. In the article, Catherine Murphy, a Social Democrats co-founder and TD, is quoted as having told the Mail: “It just seems an extraordinary amount.”

Then, on October 8th, the Social Democrats posted a tweet to the party’s main Twitter account, which claimed: “The NTA has issued a €2.7 billion tender for the rollout of a contactless ticketing system across public transport. This is an incredible amount of money. We need to stop the waste of public money before it happens.”

The tweet was accompanied by a photo of Jennifer Whitmore, a Social Democrats TD for Wicklow and the party’s spokesperson on Climate and Biodiversity, and Children and Youth Affairs and a member of the Environment and Climate Action Committee.

Many replies from the public outlined how the tweet was, in their view, totally wrong or misleading. Often using stronger phrases.

Despite this, the tweet — which has gained over 184.5k views — is still online today.

Since it was first tweeted, Deputy Whitmore also distributed a leaflet to constituents in Wicklow, which makes the intent of the tweet clearer and more clearly wrong.

The leaflet was sent in a pre-paid Oireachtas envelope which are allocted to TDs and Senators to communicaion with constituents.

Whitmore’s leaflet said: “‘A country with more money than sense.’ That is how Ireland is being described in the international media. And it’s hard to disagree when we look at the recent revelations in relation to public spending. In the last 3 weeks alone, we learned about… €2.7bn for public transport contactless ticketing system, when other countries have done it for a fraction of the cost.”

Other examples in the leaflet included the Leinster House bike shelter and security hut.

A photo of the leaflet was posted on Twitter on October 19th by Cllr Feljin Jose (Green Party), a Dublin-based councillor who formerly chaired the Dublin Commuter Coalition. He confirmed a resident in Bray received it on October 16th.

With the photo, Cllr Jose said: “So after being called out for creating this clearly fake news story about a €2.7 billion contract for contactless payments on public transport, they’ve decided to put it on leaflets and deliver it to people’s houses.”

He added: “I’ve lost a lot of respect for them over this. Not retracting it was bad. Doubling down is shocking.”

On the same day, October 19th, IrishCycle.com asked the party via its press office to explain why it had kept its social media post online when so many people pointed to the issue with it. The party was also asked whether the SocDems has information that the public transport contactless ticketing system will cost billions. There was no reply.

Emails were also sent to the party on October 21st, October 22nd, October 23rd (outlining how the NTA replied by saying the figure was inaccurate), and then again on October 24th. There was no reply to any of these requests for comment.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.