Dáil debates

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

 

Departmental Properties

5:00 pm

Photo of Emmet StaggEmmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this issue. I thank the Minister, Deputy Quinn, for coming to the House to deal with it. Piper's Hill is a new all-embracing educational campus just outside Naas in County Kildare. It is organised and operated by Kildare VEC, or more accurately by the chief executive of the VEC, Mr. Seán Ashe. There are many opinions among educationalists and sociologists about the desirability of shoe-horning the wide spectrum of educational provision onto one site. Time will tell if this experiment works well or otherwise. However, I do not want to raise that aspect of the Piper's Hill campus today. Instead, I wish to focus on the extraordinary and unorthodox methods used to raise the funding for the campus.

In his response, perhaps the Minister will give the House details of the sequence of events that led to him being forced last summer to meet a shortfall of over €20 million for this project from funds that had been earmarked for the school summer projects and other schemes. It seems that the chief executive of the VEC, Mr. Ashe, who was the driving force behind the project and the novel model for funding it, decided to sell the old second level VEC school in Naas to Superquinn for €23 million. Superquinn paid a deposit of €2.3 million and was supposed to pay the balance of €21.7 million in February 2010. The chief executive then made the extraordinary and dangerous decision to raise a loan of €21.7 million with Bank of Ireland on the back of the Superquinn deal, which was ultimately not concluded. He did that with the sanction of the Fianna Fáil Minister for Education and Skills, with whom he was closely associated.

When Superquinn failed to come up with the balance of €21.7 million in February 2010, it sought additional time and agreed to pay the interest on the VEC loan. The wheels were now seriously coming off the wagon. The deal was falling asunder. The VEC, the Department and the taxpayer were exposed. The chickens were coming home to roost on an extraordinarily risky venture that was pursued at the end of the madness that was the building boom. By mid-2010, Superquinn was in receivership and the VEC was stuck with a loan which it could not pay and should never have raised in the circumstances.

I understand that the Department of Education and Skills and the taxpayer were obliged to pick up the tab for the total of €21.7 million that was due. It appears that this year's school summer projects and other schemes were jeopardised as a result. Can the Minister give the House an assurance that the type of risk-taking and venture activity that was at the core of this case will no longer be sanctioned by him? Will he introduce the necessary checks and balances on how VECs raise funds for school buildings to ensure the type of fiasco that occurred at Piper's Hill does not happen again?

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