Anne Ferris (Wicklow, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am not an accountant. I do not own a business but, like most people, my life is very much affected by the way other people run their businesses and how their accountants and auditors do their work.

The behaviour and accountability of the people who audit large corporate organisations is as important as the content of the accounts themselves. It is important to customers, employees, competitors and society at large that there is as much transparency as possible in the published audited accounts of large companies.

I will give the Minister of State an example of how things can go wrong. This week in my constituency, Bray Town Council announced the suspension of the River Dargle flood defence scheme, a €28 million project aimed at reducing the risk of flooding in Bray. It is an important project. In little over 100 years, there have been four very serious flooding events in Bray, resulting in one death from drowning and damage to thousands of homes and businesses. As with most repeat flooding, there is a recognisable pattern to the Bray floods. The River Dargle floods every 20 to 35 years. The last time the Dargle flooded was in 1986, during Hurricane Charlie. That was 27 years ago. With the added effects of climate change and more intensive rainfall patterns, the odds of flooding in Bray either this winter or next winter are so tight that I would not expect Paddy Power to accept a bet against it.

The Dargle flood relief project was programmed to be completed by October 2013. As it stands, it is only 35% complete and the contractor, SIAC Construction, is as we speak demobilising and leaving Bray. SIAC Construction is currently in examinership. This is one of the country's biggest construction companies, with 550 employees and relationships with hundreds of other companies that act as suppliers and subcontractors at various sites around the country, including in Bray. People connected with SIAC are worried about jobs and debts owed. People in Bray are concerned about the risk of flooding on a project that will be delayed further by the need to appoint a new contractor.

Many questions are being asked about the Bray project. One of the most significant of these is whether the current financial status of the company was foreseeable at the time SIAC was awarded the Bray project. I do not doubt that SIAC provided audited accounts to Bray Town Council of a standard that gave the local authority sufficient comfort to appoint it to the project, but I have to wonder if things might have been different had the accounts of SIAC been required to include a declaration with regard to potential future liabilities of the company. That is one improvement the Companies Bill 2012, when enacted, could achieve for the public good.

I look forward to seeing that complex legislation come to a conclusion in the near future. In the meantime, I welcome the initiative by the Minister to extract parts of the Companies Bill 2012 for the purpose of advancing them more rapidly in the legislation before us today, in particular the proposal to amend the existing examinership provisions for small private companies. Examinership is a position that no company, employee or creditor wants to be in but it gives companies an opportunity to save employment, unlike closure and liquidation.

I am told that the law could result in a flood of applications to replicate the success of the Homebase examinership where that company used the process to restructure rents on premises. As someone struggling with a very high rent on my constituency office, I have sympathy with anybody who seeks to use the law for that purpose. The bottom line is that companies and legislators must do what is legally possible to safeguard jobs.

I welcome this legislation. I take the opportunity to thank the Minister of State, Deputy Hayes, for his continued support for us in Bray with the flood protection scheme. The people of Bray have been campaigning for funding since Hurricane Charlie in 1986. Successive Governments refused to give us the money but shortly after the general election, as the Minister is aware, and with a little lobbying from Deputies, he secured the funding for the Bray flood protection scheme, and I thank him for that.

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