Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The most significant thing the Minister said in his speech this morning was that CIE, Iarnród Éireann and Bus Éireann had lodged their accounts in the Oireachtas Library in November. This Bill is an attempt to give a lifeline to CIE. We must ask why it needs a lifeline and we must ask why it lodged its accounts in November. November is inexplicably late and it is not the first time CIE has lodged its accounts late. It is a consistent defaulter in terms of being able to deliver simple accounts within a six month period, which is lenient by any standards. Admittedly the auditors are given accounts without qualification but not without reservation and they have serious concerns about CIE being a going concern. This Bill is immensely significant because it comes before the House when this company cannot produce accounts on time and its auditors have reservations about it being a going concern, yet the Bill allows the company to increase its borrowings from €107 million to €300 million. Why should we do that?

I am not one for knocking public transport but I will knock it if it is not being run or administered properly, if somewhere at the top and in the middle there is a lot going wrong. CIE has been indulged by successive Governments for far too long. CIE had what the Minister described as a surplus in 2006, 2007 and 2008 but that was a misnomer. People think a surplus is a profit but CIE does not make a profit. At that time it was getting a €300 million subsidy and the change that was left over was described as a surplus. The company has been indulged because of political influence. It has consistently taken this surplus but been unable to explain why it cannot give clear accounts on time. It is in accounting terms a semi-State basket case. It may deliver a reasonable service in various places but in terms of its commercial mandate, it fails on virtually every single count. It is worrying that this seems to be continuing under this Government.

It is only a couple of years ago that a secret report, because that is the way CIE was run, was commissioned to look into some of the practices going on inside it. It cost €500,000 and reported that there were completely unacceptable practices such as backhanders, wrongdoing and all sorts of corrupt activity within the company. Attempts to bring that report to the Joint Committee on Transport were vaguely successful; they were not totally frustrated but they were not pursued with the sort of enthusiasm expected from the Government of the time. CIE was at the time and still is politically controlled. Happily, many of the board members who were appointed by the last Government have now gone, many of them favoured friends of former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. The fact, however, that such appalling behaviour was discovered within CIE, and there is little evidence that corruption was not endemic, is still worrying. I would like to hear from the Minister if he is satisfied all the wrongdoing and the millions that were discovered to be lost to CIE during that period have been cleaned up. Is he satisfied the indulgence that went on in this enormously loss making company is over, and that the Cabinet and the Minister are on top of the company, which was extravagant in the extreme, loose in its controls and generous to its staff and its directors?

The problem in semi-State bodies of this sort, and CIE is the worst offender, is that it starts at the top. I note what the Minister did, and he has done some good things about CIE. The appointment of almost an entirely new board was commendable and the way it was done was to be recommended; although it was not perfect, it was an improvement. That, however, is countered by the fact that a large number of those appointed by the outgoing Government in its final days are still there. Why are they still there? They were appointed because they were protegees of Fianna Fáil or the Green Party and they should have been removed forthwith. They were not.

On top of that, the Minister and new Government, in accordance with the policy which it had promised when it entered power, not only appointed new chairmen, but had them appear before a committee. This was apparently a great reform but they did not go before the Joint Committee on the Environment, Transport, Culture and the Gaeltacht to be ratified, because the appointments had already been made; it was a showpiece. Four of them went in one day before 27 people for an hour and 50 minutes. That was it. It was a farce.

If the Government is sincere about appointments to these bodies, those people should be interviewed for suitability by all-party Oireachtas committees and should explain their vision for the semi-State in question. Then that committee should be allowed to ratify or not. In this case, from memory, Vivienne Jupp, who was put in charge, was given three minutes to give her vision for CIE, part of which was that she lived close to a DART station and so knew a lot about it. She was then subject to a few questions before the committee moved on to the next person and the next. She was thanked and off they went. It was derisory. The appointment was already made.

If the Government is serious about reforming semi-States, it will start with the chairmen and subject them to serious scrutiny, asking them to be ratified and then it may start to tackle the problems within organisations like CIE.

CIE, certainly two years ago, was rotten to the core. I do not know if it is unprecedented, but four auditors holding such strong reservations about it being a going concern should make us think twice about throwing €300 million in its direction and saying it is all right. In July because it hit a crisis the Minister, quite wrongly, said that yes, it was a basket case but it would be given another €36 million. Greatly to his credit, in October he said he would not give it the money because it was not up to scratch in terms of what it was doing.

We need an inquiry into the company. We need to know whether the €278 million it is now getting is really going to subventions. The accounts, which I have read, are very opaque and give little detail on the transfer of this money to particular routes. We need to know that the massive subvention is actually being spent on those routes that are not profitable and whether it should continue. We know very little about where these subventions go. We know that politicians are frightened of challenging them, which is understandable. We know that politicians are frightened of challenging public transport because they feel they are threatening a service that is serving the people in a necessary way. I am not opposed to subsidising services that are necessary. However, I am opposed to throwing money at a rotten company that has been found to be corrupt in the past three years unless we get an assurance that those practices are now over and that the cover-ups that were going on previously have now ended.

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