Office of Public Works
The Office of Public Works is a major Irish Government agency, which manages most of the Irish State's property portfolio, including hundreds of owned and rented Government offices and police properties, oversees National Monuments and directly manages some heritage properties, and is the lead State engineering agency, with a special focus on flood risk management. It lies within the remit of the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, with functions largely delegated to a Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation with special responsibility for the Office. The OPW has a central role in driving the Government's property asset management reform process, both in respect of its own portfolio and that of the wider public service. The agency was initially known as the Board of Works, a title inherited from a preceding body, and this term is still sometimes encountered.
The second oldest state agency in all of Ireland, the OPW subsumed the functions of the Commissioners and Overseers of Barracks and the Board of Works / Civil Buildings Commissioners, the Directors-General of Inland Navigation, and some functions of the Postmaster-General, and those of the Public Works Loans Commissioners.
In the 21st century, the OPW includes the Government Publications Office, and publishes the State gazette, Iris Oifigiúil, and also manages some aspects of the household of the President of Ireland. It for many years oversaw aspects of public procurement, including the first centralised national procurement office. Its fisheries functions later moved to more specialised departments, the inland navigation functions were largely transferred to Waterways Ireland in 1999, and many purchasing functions moved to the Office of Government Procurement in 2014.
Name
The body is formally The Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, though the full title is rarely used, other than in legislation, with Office of Public Works the main working title, even in parliamentary documents and accounts, and Board of Works is also used. Legally the Office's powers are vested in its three commissioners, though operationally it has a broader management team.History
Preceding bodies
Until the late 17th century, public buildings in Ireland were financed, constructed and maintained by royal officials, most notably the Surveyor General of Ireland, without any involvement of parliamentary authorities, but in 1700, the Irish Parliament created two bodies, a set of land trustees, and the Commissioners and Overseers of Barracks to handle military accommodation, using funds allocated by parliamentary vote. In 1759, the role of the Barrack Board was extended to include fortresses and other public buildings, and its name became the Barrack Board and Board of Works. The body of seven salaried commissioners were made responsible for forts, palaces and other public buildings, including Dublin Castle, specifically covering their furnishing and maintenance. The Surveyor General of the time, who was also, as had been the convention for at least decades, the Engineer General of the Board of Ordnance, raised some concerns about the potential interference of the new commissioners with his role, and in 1761, responsibility for fortifications was moved from the Barrack Board and Board of Works to the Board of Ordnance. However, in 1762, it was decided to abolish the office of Surveyor General, and this was completed by 1763, with most of its work transferred to the Barrack Board and Board of Works, and the remainder was continued by the staff of the Board of Ordnance, within which a reduced version of the role was created.Establishment
The office was created on 15 October 1831 by the , which provided for a body of three commissioners, with powers to employ staff, pay for works, and make loans to other bodies, accountable quarterly to the Treasury in London. The Westminster Parliament took this step partly to better manage a sum of £500,000 which had been made available to deal with poverty caused by the 1831 famine in Ireland, and partly to reduce the cost and complexity arising from the proliferation of public bodies in the area of public works in Ireland. It was formed to assume the functions of the Commissioners for Public Buildings / Board of Works, the Commissioners and Overseers of Barracks, and the Directors-General of Inland Navigation. The office also took on functions from other bodies, most specifically concerned with Ireland, including the Postmaster General and the Public Works Loan Commissioners, which continued to operate for several decades alongside the OPW, but also including the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. The commissioners were given the power to pay salaries but not to promise or pay pensions. The body was, and sometimes still is, informally known as the Board of Works, from the name of one of the predecessor authorities.Development in the 19th century
Loans
The Commissioners of Public Works were given responsibility for administration and recovery of funds provided for public relief works under Public Works Loans Act 1817, and given powers to extend further loans for construction or improvement of works, so long as there was some income from which to repay these loans, and to a cap of half a million pounds outstanding at any one time. Power to make outright grants, of up to 50,000 pounds, was also given. By 1845, the OPW had already disbursed more than a million pounds in loans and grants.Harbours, fisheries and roads
Already from 1831, the OPW was made responsible for the completion of the part-built Kingstown Harbour, and Dunmore Harbour. Howth Harbour, as completed in the early 1820s, and the road from the village to Dublin city, were transferred from the Commissioners for Woods and Forests in 1836, and other royal harbours, at Ardglass and Donaghadee, were transferred to OPW control in 1838. The Commissioners of Public Works were initially assigned responsibility to collect repayment on loans advanced by the former Irish Fisheries Commissioners, as well as completing any fisheries pier construction projects already underway. A temporary commission sitting from 1834 made recommendations which resulted in a new act of Parliament, the , which expanded the OPW's remit around fisheries considerably, and was followed by further related acts over the following five years, which also added a role in the promotion of deep-sea fishing.The Office of the Postmaster General had responsibility for several hundred miles of road built from the 1820s on by county Grand Juries, mostly in more remote parts of Ireland, while the Directors of Inland Navigation had also grant-funded the development of hundreds of miles of roads, and all of these were transferred to the Commissioners of Public Works.
Inland navigation
Inland navigation responsibilities transferred from the Directors General of Inland Navigation were initially focused on the upper River Shannon, including two of its major lakes and estuarine tributary the Maigue, and the River Boyne and the Tyrone Navigation. In 1839, the Shannon Commission, a body of three officials, was created to take responsibility for the whole Shannon Navigation system, but this body was dissolved already in 1846, and its functions transferred to the Office of Public Works, which was assigned two additional commissioners to take account of the increased workload. The navigation work employed considerable numbers of people during the Great Famine, and over half a million pounds was spent on channel deepening, and the building of piers, embankments and bridges by 1850. Later works included the construction of the Ballinamore and Ballyconnell Canal, and further major developments on the Shannon system from 1880 to 1884, as well as a separate project on the River Suck system.Drainage and flood risk management
The Office's involvement with drainage began in its early years, and extended with the ', after which large-scale drainage schemes followed, and extended further after the passage of the ', which enabled the OPW to fully fund works.The Arterial Drainage Act 1945, codified the work of the OPW in this area, and required the elaboration of a national drainage plan. From 1948 to 1992 works were carried out on more than 30 rivers, protecting 647,050 acres of land.
The Famine years
The commissioners were asked to provide work to help mitigate the effects of the Great Famine, with four acts passed at Westminster in 1846 for what were called "relief works", respectively for general public works, county works, building of piers, harbours and fisheries facilities, and drainage projects. These were followed by additional acts to support the issuing of loans to finance further employment, but there were issues with quality control, coordination across districts, and management of the large workforces involved.Civic buildings
From the Commissioners of Civic Buildings, management of Dublin Castle, the Phoenix Park, and official residences and court buildings was moved to the OPW from its inception, followed by district-level mental asylums in 1834. In 1836, the Treasury Building at Dublin Castle was converted as a base for the newly formed Irish Constabulary and placed in OPW care, and in 1842 the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, and the new Smithfield Prison, were also taken in hand, followed in 1845 by the Queen's Colleges at Cork, Galway and Belfast – which later became University College Cork, University College Galway and Queen's University Belfast – and Maynooth College. Management of coast guard and customs facilities was also assumed in 1845, and by 1857 properties concerned with the Revenue Commissioners, the Post Office and the National Education Board were also under OPW management.The OPW had responsibility for the building of primary school teacher housing and national school buildings from 1856, and for local dispensaries, and provision of financial help towards housing for the working classes, both urban and farm labouring. Major works were performed concerning other public buildings, including the erection of the National Museum and National Library, with a budget of 100,000 pounds.