Still have no clue why it returns a undef after a successful table creation, but to get around it I have set the RaiseError => 1 and put an eval around the prepare and execute. This seems to be working and still capturing any errors that might occur.

# Prepare the SQL query
    eval {
      $sth = $dbh->prepare($$sql);
    };
    if ($@) {
       confess("ERROR:$0: Error in SQL prepare \n $@ ");
    }

# Execute the SQL Query
    eval {
      $sth->execute();
    };
    if ($@) {
       $dbh->rollback();
       confess("ERROR:$0: Error in SQL execute \n $@ ");
    }
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