Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Various sources involved in the process have indicated to me that they always felt that all bidders were not playing from the same starting line. In the information pack sent to prospective bidders who had signed confidentiality agreements it stated that it should be assumed that the company will be acquired on a debt free and cash free basis, yet I have had strong indications that when Siteserv was sold to Millington it had €10 million on its balance sheet, a combination of cash and debtors, something which has to be inquired into.

We now know that Millington paid €40 million to IBRC and €5 million went to the shareholders of Siteserv in order to get them to agree to the deal. Yet others involved in the process clearly said they would have paid more. When a person from Altrad, a trade buyer which was excluded from the bidding process, turned up at the shareholders' meeting on 5 April 2012 the person commented that they wondered about the confidentiality aspect of the deal. It was said that if one looked at any of the acquisitions it made, it kept everything in total confidence.

He went on to dismiss claims by Siteserv that there was only a slim chance that Altrad would stick with the higher bid. He said that the reality was that with the synergies it had with Siteserv, €60 million would have been a low bid, but that was his company's opening bid. If an open fight had been taken place and people with synergy had been allowed in, the deal could have gone well beyond €60 million.

Another point that leads to a question is share activity. At the start of November 2011, the share price for Siteserv was 3.5 cent, yet over the course of the month as the supposed confidential process intensified, the purchasing of Siteserv shares increased 53 fold. The review the Minister has commissioned is to be undertaken by Kieran Wallace of KPMG. It cannot be considered to be independent, no matter how much one tries to stretch the imagination. It led the sale and represented the personal interests of many of the key players involved in the sale, and Kieran Wallace led the liquidation of Siteserv plc.

The Siteserv special liquidator's report was signed off by him and he was the one who distributed the €5 million to the shareholders when it was formally signed off. A map of almost all the key players in the Siteserv saga leads back to one place and that is KPMG. Let me read a list. The chairman of Siteserv during the sale is a consultant and company director with KPMG. Robert Dix, a non-executive director at Siteserv, was a partner in KPMG----

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