Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Phil Hogan, the Opposition spokesperson for the environment, heritage and local government, for bringing forward this Private Members' Bill. I chair the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and we have discussed the Dublin Docklands Development Authority on numerous occasions at meetings during the course of this year. I accept Deputy Quinn's comments in that it was originally set up in 1997 to secure social and economic regeneration of the docklands area.

Earlier this year members of the committee visited the area and were very impressed with the various activities we saw. Only last week the new chairperson of the authority, Professor Niamh Brennan, appeared before the committee to discuss its annual report. It was like being on a different planet from where we were earlier in the year dealing with the same organisation. That is down to the changes in the organisation in the intervening period.

I have a straightforward view. I listened to Professor Brennan at the meeting and as Chairman I put the straight question to her of why our committee should not recommend that the organisation be dissolved in view of the massive financial losses and because it will take a couple of years before it can break even. It will probably take forever and a day to repay its deficit. I was impressed at Professor Brennan's ability, competence and confidence in arguing that her team was the best organisation to bring the authority forward. As Chairman of the committee, I am willing to go along with that and give her some time.

She stated that losses have arisen and somebody will have to pick up the tab. If Dublin City Council or some other organisation gets it, somebody else would be picking up the pieces. Professor Brennan felt the authority was the best organisation to deal with the matter.

One difficulty is that it is a combined planning and development authority. Professor Brennan has indicated that separate reports are being carried out and structures are to be implemented to separate the two functions. There is an inevitable problem when people in an organisation want to promote planning and development, with others dealing with social and economic regeneration. It must be difficult to separate the two concepts.

Professor Brennan noted that there was a systemic conflict of interest between directors on the board of the authority and Anglo Irish Bank. That has now been excised and is no longer the case. We are picking up the pieces from these difficulties and transactions entered into. Other members of the authority, including Dublin City Council members, must have been horrified about what was happening in their name. As they are local people they were probably getting flak for some of the decisions made above their heads. It was disappointing to yesterday hear the Sinn Féin representative from Dublin city argue that the authority is very unrepresentative of the area. It was an enormous slight on the community representatives on the council, although major mistakes were made.

The Comptroller and Auditor General should not audit the authority. The auditing practices of the Comptroller and Auditor General are probably no better or worse than most of the major accounting firms in the world. It is normal procedure that non-commercial State bodies have the Comptroller and Auditor General as auditor but this is not so for commercial State organisations. The principal reason is that the Comptroller and Auditor General normally audits organisations where practically all the funding is provided by the Exchequer; the Dublin Docklands Development Authority may get little or no funding but much of what it gets is generated from development levies raised by the authority itself at local level. That commercial activity would mean it would not normally come under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General is overstretched but there must be more accountability to this House from the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. I would like to see a change in legislation on that front but there are more substantive issues to be dealt with in the authority than changing the auditor.

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