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

The last point there was the one I wanted to make. I will underline it. Even if subsidiary DACs are subject to freedom of information law, the commercial sensitivity issues kick in as soon as we involve private commercial interests. In negotiations between State bodies and local authorities and publicly owned agencies or entities and any form of private commercial interest, those commercial sensitivity issues come in to play. As a result, we do not actually get to see the financial detail. I have been through this saga. I will cite as an instance in this regard the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company. We successfully campaigned to get the company dissolved and reintegrated into the council. For the years it was in operation, however, we could not find out anything about what it was doing. Notionally, permission had to be sought from the Minister for Transport but in actuality the board of the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company decided everything and got everything rubber-stamped from the relevant Ministers. The truth is that the local councillors or Deputies could not get any information. Commercial sensitivity was wheeled out for everything. We were told we could not be given certain information because it was commercially sensitive. That is what will happen here. It is one of the key flaws and follies of the whole enterprise as conceived by the Government. Once we bring in arrangements with private business through these DAC structures, commercial sensitivity issues will kick in.

The Minister may claim some credit on amendment No. 184 for requiring ministerial approval for the disposal of land by the DACs but it does not take away from the fact that the cardinal problem is that the DACs will be able to dispose of public land. There are some safeguards but to my mind the safeguards against that are not adequate to protect against the slippery slope or the fact that in reality the driver will be the LDA and not the Minister. Councillors will be last to know. It will be the LDA driving things and getting them rubber-stamped by Ministers. That is my experience of these bodies. To be honest, I do not believe that as time goes on anything will be different with the LDA and these DACs.