Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Páirtí an Lucht Oibre agus Fine Gael as ucht an rún seo a chur os ár gcomhair. Is trua é nár lorg siad tacaíocht ón bhFreasúra ar fad. Is scannal iomlán é seo, agus ba chóir go mbeimis ar fad gafa leis. Tiocfaidh an vóta, áfach, agus tacóimid leis an rún.

As far back as last March, I wrote to Deputy Noonan, Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, recommending an investigation into the agreed purchase of Thornton Hall. In February of this year, I asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, the basis on which a decision was made to locate the new prison at Thornton. He responded to the effect that advertisements were placed in the national media requesting persons to come forward with proposals for potentially suitable sites and that a departmental sub-committee was assigned to consider the offers.

What the Minister failed to mention in his reply was that according to a letter from the landowner in question, a letter he sent to local residents, a representative of the Government approached him wishing to make an offer on his farm. He stated he had never at any time considered putting the property on the market and he did not engage in the tendering process as outlined by the Minister.

Having considered the numerous concerns raised by the local community and the Minister's answers to my questions, it is my opinion that the Comptroller and Auditor General should immediately conduct a thorough investigation into this matter and produce a written report for the Oireachtas before the Minister for Finance gives his final sanction to the purchase of Thornton Hall. The concerns on which my opinion on this matter are based focus on the fact that Thornton Hall does not meet the criteria set down by the expert group. It was posited months after the published closing date and should not have been accepted as it had not gone through the tendering process. The site was evaluated in isolation and processed with extreme haste. It was purchased for six times the market value and the decision to purchase was based on incomplete, inaccurate and misleading information. No environmental impact study was undertaken and the selection criteria used were not clear and objective.

The committee's adviser overstepped his remit and there are serious concerns in regard to a possible conflict of interest and perhaps collusion in respect of this adviser, who is related to a Senator. The latter, Senator O'Toole, has a close connection to the landowner in question. Was the Senator present at the initial negotiation regarding these lands? Is it not odd that this adviser, Mr. Webster, was a guest at this year's Fianna Fáil fundraising tent at the Galway Races?

An expert group spent a year in deliberations only to discard all the sites it had considered and overrule its own previous decisions in opting for a new site, all at one meeting six months after the start of the tendering process. I stand by my previous assertion in this House that the manner in which the site at Thornton Hall was purchased stinks to high Heaven. I would go further and suggest it may even have been a corrupt deal.

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