Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

General Scheme of Dublin Docklands Development Authority (Dissolution) Bill 2014: Discussion

3:55 pm

Mr. Alan Robinson:

The committee has to be fit for purpose. We need a specific raison d'êtrefor the committee because this area is nationally important and can provide huge job potential for the area. It is important that the committee and the business and community representatives on it contribute in a proper way. It is a wake-up call. Realex Payments is an indigenous Irish company located on Sir John Rogerson's Quay that is taking on PayPal. It is doing remarkable things and moving a chunk of its operations to London. It is doing that because its legal fees are €70,000 while in London, it is said that the company will not need anything more than €5,000. Realex gets a lease this size from NAMA - I am not joking - while the lease in London is a few pages. That is one of the reasons why we need effective, real businesspeople on this committee and not the usual stakeholder brigade because it is only real businesspeople who might tell one that one does not want to hear. If a situation arises in the docklands where one, two or three of these medium-sized companies pull out, one is then talking about a game changer in the wrong direction.

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