Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reason I mentioned "the functions of Bus Éireann that directly relate to the provision by it of school transport services for the Department of Education and Skills on a contract agency basis" is that legislation permits that those who provide services on a contract basis for a public body can be included in the freedom of information provisions. We all understand that Bus Éireann is out there in the commercial arena. I am not even remotely suggesting that the company be brought into it. The Minister and I probably agree that we should not give a commercial disadvantage to State-owned companies that are competing with the private sector. However, school transport is a public duty. It is really a Department of Education and Skills function. It is contracted from the Department of Education and Skills to Bus Éireann. The company involved need not be Bus Éireann; it could be any company. The essence of amendment No. 11 is that the school transport function, which is an integral part of the functions of the Department of Education and Skills, whether it is carried out by Bus Éireann or any other company, should be subject to the freedom of information provisions. My views are clear. The Minister will get the gist of what I am saying in that regard.

Amendments Nos. 85 to 97, inclusive, are quite a group. On the ones in my name, there is a list of exempted bodies in that schedule and I want EirGrid excluded from the list of exempted bodies. I refer to amendment No. 90, which relates to EirGrid. This is an issue. The Minister, even in his own county, will be aware of the operations of EirGrid with the Grid Link project. It is important how EirGrid goes about its business. This is an organisation that is not in commercial competition with any State company or anybody in the private sector. It is the provider of the network. This time last week, I was at an oral hearing against an EirGrid proposal in County Laois. Having lodged an objection with An Bord Pleanála, I have seen how the company operates at first hand. I have been dealing with it for a number of years in the midlands. There are 400 kV pylons traversing the midlands from Moneypoint up towards Dublin. They have been there for 20 or 25 years.

The reason it is necessary for EirGrid to be excluded from the list of exempted agencies is that it is having a serious impact on the lives of many individuals. I am not happy about how EirGrid goes about its business. There are several State organisations that do work on behalf of the State in terms of the provision of services, and some of them go about it in a good way. I will contrast how the National Roads Authority, NRA, does its work with how EirGrid does its work. They should be similar organisations in terms of how they deal with the public. They want to bring a line from A to B, and they have alternative routes and alternative corridors. In many places in which the motorway network was built over the past decade or so, many people whose families had lived in particular houses for a hundred or two hundred years found that those houses had to be removed and bulldozed to make way for them. By and large, the NRA did a good job. It is probably unpopular politically to say that, because commentators enjoy taking a crack at the NRA, but I have seen at first hand how it explained to the people how it was going about its business, and its representatives met people in a non-confrontational manner. EirGrid could learn much from the likes of the NRA. I suggest that if the NRA could be moved in to take over EirGrid, all the problems that we will probably encounter over the coming period would not happen. The reason is that EirGrid is secretive about how it does its business. It is not up-front about it. As I have said to the face of the EirGrid representatives at the public hearing, they deliberately misled the public. They give out false information.