Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

I accept he does not have but I make the analogy that problems arise when one sets up bodies that are not accountable to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Minister is a member of the Government and I refer to holding him accountable in that context. CIE will not reveal the full facts about the report. It has refused to give the report to me and others. To date, it has not provided the Minister with the report either. We are trying to make CIE accountable. The intention of the Bill is to make the Dublin Docklands Development Authority accountable, but we need to make other quangos, such as CIE, accountable as well. That is not to say there are not fabulous, good people working in such bodies; of course there are, but there are significant abuses which have been uncovered by CIE's own auditors which it will not allow us to see.

In terms of port authorities, the Minister could do worse than ask his colleague, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, to consider the second largest port in the country, the Shannon Foynes Port Company and the issues that arose in that regard. The best site in Foynes, 16.6 acres of land, was sold in 2002 to a company for a little more than €2 million. What was wrong with that? There was a hell of a lot wrong with it because there was no public auction for the land, no tendering process and no administrative powers were given to the chief executive at that time to carry out those inquiries, investigations or procedures with that company. The company which bought the site, which was sold by the taxpayer for €2 million, paid more than €12 million for it three years later. There are records of its interest in that site in 2004 and yet the port company did not hold a public tendering process. A report by Deloitte points out that serious and significant issues arise from that. Some people in Foynes believe there was corruption at the heart of what happened there and it is unacceptable to them.

Also in Foynes, an arrangement was made-----

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