Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I compliment Deputy Hogan on tabling this Private Members' Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to give the Comptroller and Auditor General the power to audit the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and to compel the chief executive officer to attend before an Oireachtas committee to account for the authority's activities and to report on its financial accounts.

I fully support the objectives of the Bill. The DDDA was a good and exciting initiative. My colleague, Deputy Quinn, created the vision. It delivered very valuable regeneration projects down through the years. It was the jewel in the crown of State-sponsored development bodies until it unfortunately cosied up to the developer and financier, was enthralled by the get rich quick philosophy and was ultimately corrupted in its operations.

The annual report for 2008 makes sorry reading. A consolidated income and expenditure surplus of €3.7 million in 2007 had become an incredible deficit of €213 million in 2008. The reckless purchase of the Irish Glass Bottle Company site with a private developer at the height of the property boom was a disaster and more than €5 million in interest payments are now haemorrhaging out of the authority's accounts for a site that was never developed and whose purchase price of more than €400 million has now dwindled to a mere €60 million estimated value.

Professor Niamh Brennan, the new chairwoman of the authority, has admitted that the Dublin Docklands Development Authority will need an injection of at least €35 million from the State to bolster its repayments on the Irish Glass Bottle site. The section 25 planning permission granted on the North Lotts site was found by the High Court to be flawed, lacking in transparency and declared null and void. A further legal action has been initiated by Bernard McNamara against the DDDA in regard to the Irish Glass bottle site transaction.

A "systematic conflict of interest" occurred at the docklands authority in the middle years of this decade according to the chairwoman, Professor Niamh Brennan, in the annual report 2008. Crossover, high level membership of the board with directors of financial institutions poisoned the authority's operation. Thus irregularities in planning and in financing and blatant conflicts of interest have damaged the good name of the authority and crippled its operation in recent years. The docklands is now strewn with shelved, cancelled or half built projects.

The mission statement of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority was to provide economic and social regeneration for the docklands area and for the docklands communities. It stated: "We will develop Dublin Docklands into a world-class city quarter, a paragon of sustainable inner city regeneration, one in which the whole community enjoys the highest standards of access to education, employment, housing and social amenity and which delivers a major contribution to the social and economic prosperity of Dublin and the whole of Ireland."

While it facilitated the construction of more than 4,000 units of accommodation and granted planning permission for 811 units of social and affordable housing under the section 25 planning scheme, it failed to provide for the housing needs of the local dockland communities. Some 369 units or fewer than half the 811 units granted planning permission have been built and only 37 social housing units have come on stream on the northside of the Liffey, Clarion Quay, and they were built eight years ago.

There are still issues to be resolved around the joint ventures with developers for the construction of residential developments in Hanover Quay, Gallery Quay, Longboat Quay and Forbes Quay. These were developments on the old 24 acre gasometer site which had been acquired by the authority through the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government much earlier.

Approximately 200 units of social housing were provided to the authority as part of the public private partnership deals with no cost to the authority. At the same time, the authority drew down the real cost of the units from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government under the loans subsidy scheme. There is no mention good, bad or indifferent in the annual report as to what happened to this money which is well in excess of €50 million. The report only refers to the sale of 43 units of affordable houses on these sites.

The chief executive officer has promised to amend the accounts to reflect this substantial omission and I trust will also state what the moneys have been used for. For example, has the housing capital subsidy been used to run current budgets and other costs? Dublin City Council should step in, procure and allocate units which have been completed but on which the authority has been dragging its heels on the north side of the Liffey. For example, we have been waiting almost 18 months for 51 units in Castleforbes to be allocated.

Moreover, the local authority should for the time being be the sole authority for the granting of planning permission since the DDDA has demonstrated irregularities with developers and compromised the planning process, resulting in legal actions, loss of funds and credibility.

A headline in today's The Irish Times states "Gormley vows to act decisively over Dublin Docklands Authority" yet all the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has done is to ask the DDDA to compile two internal reports on the finance operations and the planning functions of the authority. He has rejected the provisions of this Bill.

The Comptroller and Auditor General needs to audit the authority and with the injection of State funds which are not being sought, he should be able to do so.

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