Infrastructure Minister Chris Bonett stuck to his script on Wednesday as he again refused to provide parliament with information about the cost of taxpayer-funded road works projects.

Bonett was asked by his Opposition counterpart Joe Giglio to state how much various, specific road repair projects had cost, how much was originally budgeted for them, how long the projects took to be completed and how long they were originally expected to take.

Giglio sought information about road works projects for Triq San Gejtanu and Triq Joe Sciberras in Ħamrun, works in the Smart City area and Triq il-Kapuċċini in Kalkara; and works in Lija’s Triq is-Salvatur and Sqaq il-Kunċizzjoni.

The minister declined to provide that information for each of the three parliamentary questions asked of him by Giglio.

One of the replies given by Bonett, who repeated that reply, word-for-word, when asked about other road projects.

Instead, on each occasion Bonett repeated the two-sentence reply he provided in reply to similar parliamentary questions on Monday and Tuesday.

The projects were part of Labour’s seven-year, €700 million nationwide roadworks plans, the minister said, adding that “Infrastructure Malta continues to carry out one project after another to prepare Malta for the future; projects that pre-2013 governments did not have the will or vision to carry out.”

Bonett’s refusal to provide information about the publicly-funded infrastructural projects was first flagged by Times of Malta on Tuesday.

The previous day, Bonett provided similar boilerplate replies to PQs concerning road works projects in Dingli, Birżebbuġa, Cospicua and Birkirkara.

Speaker Anġlu Farrugia has repeatedly ruled that he has no authority to compel ministers to answer parliamentary questions accurately or in a timely manner.

On Wednesday, rule of law NGO Repubblika expressed concern about Farrugia’s application of parliamentary rules, saying it posed a “threat to democracy”.

"In a parliamentary democracy, the government has to give account of its actions in parliament. Therefore, the Speaker's position does not make sense, and continues to allow insulting behaviour by a government that does not account for its actions," the NGO said.