Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

When I asked the Minister about this matter, he said he would bring together the Deputies from the locality to discuss the issues involved. There was no prior consultation about the individual the Minister had nominated for the position. The nomination appeared out of nowhere of an insider who was a board member, was close to the existing management and was on an audit committee that had signed off on seriously spurious expense payments and extra payments to the CEO of the company. I am a member of two committees, the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions. I am not a member of the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport and as a local Deputy, I was not specifically made aware that the nominee was to come before the committee. This is not an open and transparent procedure. I have tabled about 20 parliamentary questions seeking specific answers and investigations into payments, the pension scheme, the treatment of employees and the plans for the future of the harbour, but we are being stonewalled. An insider has been selected, someone who has been there all along. This is a selection without proper prior consultation on the nominees, what they stood for and what they had to say about these issues. It is not satisfactory.

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