Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Fianna Fáil for tabling the motion and allocating me some of its speaking time. While Siteserv is at the centre of this controversy, it is part of a wider set of issues.

I want to refer briefly to an article in The Sunday Timesfrom last Sunday. It states that in summer 2011, around the same time as the decision was made to sell Siteserv, Sierra Support Services, a Siteserv subsidiary, started preparing a bid for contracts to install water meters. Siteserv already had a contract with Bord Gáis to service boilers. According to Sierra's managing director the company began hiring water meter specialists in mid 2011. Siteserv was haemorrhaging cash and owed IBRC and the taxpayer €150 million, yet was planning for the future which involved water metering.

On 26 July 2013, a Sierra joint venture, GMC Sierra, won three contracts, worth €62 million each, to install water meters for Irish Water. To understand that, one has to go back to June 2011 when the sales process for Siteserv, led by Siteserv itself rather than an examiner, was commenced. IBRC took a hands-off approach despite being owed €150 million. A sales team was assembled, comprising Walter Hobbs, four Siteserv executives and board members, Davy Corporate Finance and KPMG. Somewhere along the way a decision was made to exclude trade buyers. Some 50 candidates were whittled down to nine expressions of interest in November 2011. On 11 November 2011 those interested parties were contacted and asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Once they were signed, an information pack about Siteserv was sent to potential bidders. This allowed for due diligence and there was a deadline of 5 p.m. on 7 December 2011, a date which should be remembered because it is important. Parties were informed that the sales team wanted the entire process to be concluded by mid-January, which was quite hasty. We now know that Millington, which was the eventual bidder, was not incorporated until 7 December 2011. Given that the entity did not exist, how could it have undertaken the three week due diligence period required of the other bidders?

Millington could not have signed a confidentiality agreement in November 2011, nor could it have received a Siteserv information pack because it did not exist at the time. If Millington was able to make a bid later in the process than all other bids, how did it come by the information it needed to make the bid? These things are not made on the back of an envelope. Who gave it the information?

It is possible that Millington used a proxy to obtain that information on its behalf. If so, how does that sit with confidentiality agreements? Given that Millington only came into existence on 7 December, the same day as the deadline for the first round of bids, how can we find out how soon after that Millington made a bid? Did that bid follow the 16 point checklist required of the other bids or was it a three page submission to which Mr. Dukes referred when he confirmed that Mr. O'Brien had advance knowledge of the sale?

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