Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Section 13 provides: "The Board shall consist of a chairperson and such number of other members, not being more than 10, as the majority shareholding Minister may determine." I have serious concerns about the Minister's intention to establish a unitary board for Bord Gáis and Uisce Éireann. We are told that Irish Water will be the largest utility in the State. If it is to share a board with another substantial utility company, it means people will be trying to ride two horses in the same race. It would be a difficult job for a board to oversee two completely different companies, which should have different cultures. I do not think a unitary board is a good idea in terms of corporate governance. I am not sure of the degree to which this proposal has been thought through.

Is this another case of giving more control to Bord Gáis, or Ervia as it is now called? Are the directors and senior management of Ervia calling the shots on everything? I suspect they have had a heavy influence to date in how the legislation was drafted and how other matters have progressed in the Uisce Éireann project. I have huge concerns about that.

I support Deputy Cowen's amendment which provides that the appointments to the board should appear before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht. That is sensible.

My proposed amendment relates to the composition of the board and the power of the Minister to appoint. The Bill states that the "Minister may determine". Those are the three key words, and we have seen an example in the last few days of how the Government determines appointments to boards. The concern here is that the board must have a proper composition. Will it be made up of people who are predominantly disposed towards privatisation? Will it be people who might not have a great insight into the situation of ordinary working people or small businesses? Will it be a few of the usual suspects? Will it be dominated by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC, and other heavy hitters? Will ordinary people be represented? What I mean by "ordinary people" are the 1.67 million householders in the State who will be customers of Irish Water. How will they be selected? Where is the filtering process and who decides who is worthy of it? It appears that the Minister has all the power. We could wake up one morning and see in one of the newspapers a list of the people who have been appointed to the board.

There are huge issues and corporate governance concerns about there being one unitary board for the largest utility company in the State. As I stated earlier in the House, it is a company that is in serious trouble financially due to how the Minister has gone about this business and the bookkeeping and creative accountancy he is using to give it life, shore it up and ensure it will get past EUROSTAT. It is the funniest piece of accounting I have ever seen. I sat on the boards of two companies and I have never seen accountancy like this. They were very small companies and I served on them in a voluntary role. That type of bookkeeping was just not allowed. In the case of this huge utility company, however, the Minister is carrying out all of these smoke and mirrors acts to try to get it past EUROSTAT in Brussels. There are huge questions about this.

The unitary board is a massive concern for me because it cannot keep its eye on the ball, and somebody will have to keep their eye on the ball of Irish Water. Irish Water will require the full attention of the eight to ten board members, but it will not get it. The Minister has put the two boards together, and there is some other agenda behind that. The big boys in Bord Gáis, IBEC or somebody else has convinced the Minister to do this, and it seemed to be a good thing to do in the view of sections of the media.

The board will decide on huge matters such as borrowing, pay and bonuses. I do not have a problem with bonuses for low to middle income workers who have earned them on the basis of performance. However, I have a problem with them for the management. We have seen recently how the managers favoured themselves. We learned that the managers were going to give themselves 18% while the ordinary workers would achieve 7% or 8% at best. That is 7% or 8% of very little. Of course, the boys at the top, on over €100,000 per year, were not happy to take the same percentage as the people on low and middle incomes. They intended to fatten up their wallets with higher percentages of a higher amount. They were going to take the cream. There must be a diligent board in place to pay attention to that.

Who determines the priorities for investment between sewerage treatment plants, leaks, meters or consultants? Will it be blown on call centres? There are 31 call centres in the State that could have served this purpose. They are the 31 local authority offices. The people in those offices have been dealing with these calls for years, and I have received a good service from the people I have dealt with over the years. However, I cannot get a good service now because it has been farmed out to a private company. We must have board members to watch this. There are also the service level agreements in place with local authorities. They must be overseen, managed, reviewed and monitored. That must be handled very carefully, and the board will want to have an input into it.

A board that has one eye on the boyos in Irish Water and another on Bord Gáis will not be able to do that job. That is the problem with this. The Minister will not get good corporate governance with this board. I do not know who talked him into this or how he arrived at the decision, but he is taking the wrong road.

In recognition of that, my amendment proposes that the key sectors be represented. They include the householders, who are the main customers, and the commercial users. In September next year, the commission will review the charges they are paying for water to the local authorities. They must be represented. They are the small businesses throughout the country who are already paying commercial water rates and have no problem with that. They must have a voice at the board. Finally, there are the trade unions, the representatives of the workers who are working in water services both in the local authorities and in Uisce Éireann. Those workers must have a voice on the board, but there is no such provision in the Bill. It simply states that the Minister "may determine".

It is not good to leave it so vague. It gives a huge amount of discretion to the Minister. When one gives a Minister that type of discretion, with no disrespect to the current Minister, he or she can do what they wish with it. That is important. The very least the Minister should do is accept the amendment proposed by Deputy Cowen regarding the committee having a role in this and the amendment I propose to ensure that those three key sectors are represented. They are the main stakeholders and we must have a guarantee that they are on the board.

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