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

Exactly. We have the ESB, Coillte and Bord na Móna, all of which are hugely successful, and we at least have some capacity to have oversight of those, although I believe we need more, but what oversight is there of private companies? There is fury and anger over the bonus culture in Irish Water, the salaries of its chief executives, the potential that we are subsidising a private company and so on. The Minister is aware of the anger about that. What is going on with €300 million of public money coming out of people's pockets? To whom is it going? Is there any oversight of the way it is being spent? Is this the best way to do it rather than through our own semi-State companies that we own, where all the benefit and value comes back to us and over which we have some real oversight? There have been allegations of political cronyism, particularly in the area of the wind turbine business, that people are in senior positions in that business who have political connections to the Government parties. We need transparency on this and I want to know who the companies are, the mechanisms that are in place to make sure this money is not just being put into consultants' pockets or going towards the payment of big salaries, bonuses and so on. Can we get detailed information?

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