Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for responding speedily to the request to appear before the committee. I want to elaborate on some of the questions already asked. What has probably taken most of us by surprise is the extent of the need for external consultants. It would be very useful for us to see the scoping document that would have been presented. The delegates might let us know whether this is possible. It would be very helpful. I presume the document would have covered the capacity of Bord Gáis. There is a feeling that we are at variance in terms of the information that was provided. For example, Bord Gáis delegates were before the committee some time ago and when we got into some detail we were told:

The billing system we use in Bord Gáis Energy is already being adapted for Irish Water and the design for the Irish Water billing system is in progress. The billing system will be ready by 1 January 2014 and we have already seconded resources from our energy retail business into Irish Water, transferring those who are proficient in the establishment of billing and customer service. Therefore, this expertise will not be lost with the privatisation. We have had to backfill some positions to replace those people, which means more employment within Bord Gáis for people from other customer service and billing organisations. This is already happening. We put forward the view that we would leverage and clearly we have already started that process. I can therefore assure the committee that we will have the billing system up and running ...

The only thing I could conclude from what was put on the record by the delegation is that this was all being done in-house. That must be considered in addition to the documents of early 2012, which I cannot put my hands on but which more or less gave the impression that there was surplus capacity within Bord Gáis. I want to be satisfied that there was not spare capacity in Bord Gáis. I do not feel satisfied that I have got that information. I accept that there sometimes needs to be expertise. The reason Bord Gáis was partnered with Uisce Éireann was because of the spare capacity.

We have to be absolutely sure of that but I cannot see how we can be sure of it without seeing the scoping document and what was there before the process started.

My second question is linked to that matter. Mr. Tierney said it was a tight timeline and I completely accept that he is right about that. Does Mr. Tierney believe that this might have added to the need to hire in expert assistance? He was working to particular timelines that were pretty much set by the Government. Most of the consultancy seems to be around areas where we had an expectation that there would be spare capacity, such as billing systems and customers but not in the engineering area. The bulk of the money has been spent on management, IT and financial systems. It is beyond the €50 million. The four lots Mr. Tierney cited totalled €68.8 million, while there is another €13 million for 21 smaller groups.

I presume that the engineering capacity would come predominantly from the local authority sector. In a rush to reduce local authority staffing levels, did we lose people who had the capacity to work directly on this, as opposed to potentially hiring consultants or even hiring them as consultants in future?

I will pose those two questions to begin with and will come back with a few others later.