Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed the Minister for Finance is not present, as he was in the House earlier. The first two Topical Issue debates were taken by the relevant line Minister.

When I first started raising this issue with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, he told me IBRC operated at arm’s length from the State. As I probed deeper, he conceded his Department was concerned about the Siteserv deal but that he was satisfied it was in the best interest of the State. When I pushed further, he eventually admitted that far from being satisfied, his Department actually conducted a full review of the deal and that following that review, the Department made a decision to second one of its officials to the board of IBRC to provide greater oversight. Six months later, IBRC was wound up in a very rushed fashion.

Today, I received freedom of information documents from the Department of Finance which show not only that the Minister was not satisfied the deal was the best one for the State but that he believed the deal resulted in a less than optimum return for the bank and, by extension, the State. That conflicts with the original reply, which is a serious issue in its own right.

I have been raising these concerns because when I started examining how the lucrative Irish Water metering contract had been awarded, the trail led me back to the IBRC sale to Siteserv, whose subsidiary, Sierra, went on to win the metering contract, and to the Denis O’Brien-owned Millington. That led me to a web of potential conflicts of interest which I am still trying to understand. I refer to people such as Mr. Richard Woodhouse, the head of specialised asset management in IBRC, who also managed the Siteserv account and the personal borrowings of the Siteserv CEO, Brian Harvey, as well as being a personal friend of Denis O'Brien. That brings me to Davy. There was one Davy adviser advising five Siteserv board members. The same legal firm, Arthur Cox, was advising or working on behalf of both seller and buyer in this deal.

I have tabled parliamentary questions but they have not been replied to, so I am asking questions here. I have been told by a whistleblower, although I am open to hearing the Minister of State’s version of this, that Millington was not even considered in the first round of bids and that Millington received a letter from the aforementioned Mr. Richard Woodhouse informing it that it needed to change its bid if it was to be considered in the second round. Millington added a €5 million cash sweetener for the shareholders to the bid and Millington was successful. The memo I got through freedom of information today again reiterates the point and the Minister’s concern that the decision to exclude trade buyers was serious. It is even more serious in the context of the metering contract which was later won.

Earlier today the Taoiseach told this House that the relationship framework governing the transaction was the 2009 framework, which did not require IBRC to involve the Department in the transaction. However, the freedom of information documents show that negotiations for the implementation of the new framework were ongoing for some time prior to that. I believe there were approximately 30 versions of it prior to the Siteserv deal. It came into effect two weeks after the conclusion of the deal. The documents further suggest that IBRC's CEO, Mike Aynsley, and the board resisted the implementation of the new framework at every hand’s turn until the Siteserv deal was concluded. I need to have an answer to that.

IBRC had been told by the Department to act as if the framework were in place earlier than when the Siteserv deal was concluded. Why did it not do so? Did Mr. Alan Dukes, as chairman of IBRC, ignore the instruction to act as if the framework were in place? The strange relationships and extremely fractious relationship between the Department and IBRC and the concerns surrounding the Siteserv transaction and other large transactions raise serious questions about the real reasons underpinning the eventual "prom night" in which IBRC was wound down in a very hurried fashion.

See this speech in context