The corporate governance arrangements for Dublin Port Company are laid out in the Companies Acts, the Harbours Act 1996 and the Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies.
The structure of the port company boards is outlined in section 30 of the Act. In the case of Dublin Port Company, there are three local authority directors, two employee directors and one CEO director. The remaining six directors are Ministerial appointees.
The Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008, which is currently at Committee Stage in the Seanad, proposes changes to the structure of port company boards. The Bill proposes to remove the statutory right for local authorities to elect three directors, and to reduce the number of employee directors in the larger port companies from two to one. This will reduce the size of the boards from the current twelve to eight.