Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I must leave shortly and shall say a brief word on the amendment. Even though we only covered a couple of amendments on the last day we covered most of the arguments around them. Although there is a series amendments, they work their way in a logical order through the Bill and are connected. A series of amendments provide that the ultimate power for managing and controlling the harbour should not be in the hands of the CEO. I contend that it should be in the hands of elected members who are required to consult with a stakeholder group. That theme has worked its way through a series of amendments which will be formally moved and then we can discuss them further on Report Stage.

In terms of this amendment, the Bill gives a CEO the right to sell shares. My amendment contends that the CEO should not have such a right because I do not believe that we should privatise our harbours. I suspect that the Government's position is that one needs flexibility to bring in private capital to develop harbours. When one looks at some of the proposals that have come forward, such as a cruise berth and the harbour master plan in Dún Laoghaire, then it become clear that it is not a very good idea to do so. Part of Dún Laoghaire harbour has already been put up for sale to finance these developments. That is not the way to go with vital infrastructure. I do not think that we should mortgage public assets in order to fund commercial speculative developments. My amendment provides that there should be no circumstances in which a CEO can mortgage or sell off the assets of a harbour. I wish to flag that a few sites in Dún Laoghaire have already been sold which is very much at odds with what the people want. The amendment is very simple in that regard.

As I will not be here later I wish to state that the only other substantial matter, beyond the ones that we have already debated, is the issue of worker directors. In the case of Dún Laoghaire, the number of employees has been substantially reduced and means they would not have a worker director under the provisions of the legislation, as it stands. I believe that any harbour, as part of the idea of having genuine stakeholders involved, should have a worker director. I have referred to a different amendment in this respect. All of my amendments share the same theme, that we need real involvement and participation by stakeholders and in this respect workers are a very important group of stakeholders. My deepest knowledge about Dún Laoghaire harbour has come from talking to the workers who know the harbour. They are the front-line people and can tell what is going on, so one must have their input on the board. If one has the threshold of employees required to have a worker director too high then one will not get such vital input. I shall leave my comments at that.