Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 1 October 2013
59. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the position regarding the selection of the chairperson for Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company; the procedures followed and criterion applied for the nomination and selection process; his role in this process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41173/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe question is about the selection of a chairperson for the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company.
The Harbours Act 1996 requires a statutory consultation before appointments are made to the port company boards.
On the appointment of the current chairperson, Mrs. Eithne Scott Lennon, I brought a memorandum to Government on this in July. Following Government approval, the chairperson designate was required to appear before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications prior to the appointment being confirmed.
As the Deputy will be aware, requiring newly nominated chairpersons to appear before the relevant Oireachtas committee is in line with broader Government reform proposals in the area of State board appointments and Dáil reform. More than a dozen chairpersons under my Department's remit have appeared before the joint committee prior to their appointment. This, I believe, provides an excellent opportunity for the individuals in question to set forward their vision for the job and allows Members of the Oireachtas to raise any particular issues or concerns they may have before the appointment is formalised.
Other initiatives in this area include a public invitation for expressions of interest in serving on State boards. Furthermore, on the appointment of board members, including chairpersons, to the individual port companies, I issue them with a letter of mandate setting out the issues and priorities that they should have regard to in carrying out their functions subject to their fiduciary duties under the Companies Act.
Mrs. Eithne Scott Lennon appeared before the committee on 18 September last and I subsequently appointed her for a five-year period as chairperson of Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company on 24 September.
I have raised the issue of Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company on umpteen occasions with the Minister and I pointed out to him that there is nothing short of blue murder between the management and the employees.
Several employees are under disciplinary procedures as they are in dispute with the company over contracts. Some of them have written to the Minister looking for determinations on their contracts and they are still waiting for them. There are serious questions about, for example, the more than €40,000 in expenses paid to a former company director which was supposed to be returned. It is not known whether that money was returned. I refer to very serious questions about the €20,000 extra being paid in some sort of payment to the chief executive officer, with very spurious explanations from the company as to the reasons for the payment and the justification for it. The pension fund has significant problems and there are serious questions about the future of the harbour. Against that background and without wishing to cast aspersions about the individual concerned, does the Minister really think it is right and appropriate that an individual who is an insider was nominated by him? This person has been on the board of the company for years. I believe she was also on the audit committee which signed off on expenses which we now know should never have been paid-----
The Deputy should complete the question, please.
-----and on extra payments to the CEO which have not been fully explained and which the Minister promised would be investigated. These are very serious questions and it seems it would have been far more appropriate to bring in someone from the outside who could have independently investigated and adjudicated on very serious matters in the harbour company.
I appreciate that there are lots of issues facing the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company, including the operation of the company, pensions and industrial relations which the Deputy has mentioned. As part of the Dáil reform procedures which are already in place, chairpersons are interviewed by the joint committee before their appointment by the Minister. The Deputy had the opportunity to attend that committee meeting in September, raise all of these issues and ask questions. Had the committee not been satisfied with the replies given, it could have made a recommendation that I not proceed with the appointment. The Deputy did not attend that meeting; he really should have been there. He had the opportunity to attend a dedicated session of the committee to raise these concerns directly with the chairperson-designate, but he did not do so.
When I asked the Minister about this matter, he said he would bring together the Deputies from the locality to discuss the issues involved. There was no prior consultation about the individual the Minister had nominated for the position. The nomination appeared out of nowhere of an insider who was a board member, was close to the existing management and was on an audit committee that had signed off on seriously spurious expense payments and extra payments to the CEO of the company. I am a member of two committees, the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions. I am not a member of the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport and as a local Deputy, I was not specifically made aware that the nominee was to come before the committee. This is not an open and transparent procedure. I have tabled about 20 parliamentary questions seeking specific answers and investigations into payments, the pension scheme, the treatment of employees and the plans for the future of the harbour, but we are being stonewalled. An insider has been selected, someone who has been there all along. This is a selection without proper prior consultation on the nominees, what they stood for and what they had to say about these issues. It is not satisfactory.
The procedure is prescribed in the Harbours Act. The position was advertised on the worldwide web and a notice may have appeared in the newspapers. As required by the Harbours Act, nominations were sought from interested parties, including business groups and unions. The chairperson in question went before the committee. As far as I am aware, committee agendas are circulated by e-mail to all Members and they are published on the worldwide web. I do not know what additional transparency is required by the Deputy-----
The Minister promised to contact local Deputies.
The Deputy made a decision to attend a meeting which he regarded as more important. It is clear that other issues are more important to him than Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company, which I appreciate. Other Deputies from the constituency attended the session.
That is rubbish.
