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

I asked 50 questions raising issues of corporate governance to do with public assets, unexplained payments, expenses and so on, over a four-year period but no action was taken. There is a story there.

This connects with the Siteserv issue. In the Minister of Finance’s statement last week, he said "any concerns around the [Siteserv] transaction were not known either to me or to my officials when answering parliamentary questions prior to June 2012”. I dug out a question I asked the Taoiseach in June 2012, when I said:

I am simply summarising what was in the Moriarty report. It made serious findings about the circumstances in which Mr. O'Brien received the aforementioned licence [the Esat licence] and about the role a former Fine Gael Minister had in helping him to secure that licence. ... This is not simply an historical question and the Taoiseach should clarify his relationship and that of his party to Mr. O’Brien. I ask him to so do particularly as a live issue faces us yet again in respect of Mr. O’Brien’s recent acquisition of Siteserv plc and its facilitation by the writing down by Anglo Irish Bank of €110 million worth of debt to that company. This deal deserves considerable scrutiny and in the context of the controversial plans to introduce water metering and water charges, I note Siteserv provides contracting services to Bord Gáis, including the installation of water meters.

The Taoiseach said:

In regard to the question about the Siteserv position, I point out to Deputy Boyd Barrett that the Competition Authority looked at that merger to see if there were any anti-competitive practices contained therein and it made its decision approving that merger independently, as is its function and responsibility.

There was no mention of the fact that the Minister for Finance had launched an investigation at that point into the sale of Siteserv. It was a case of nothing to see here. In his statement, the Minister essentially implied that because no further parliamentary questions were asked after April there was nothing for him to respond to in respect of the concerns he had about Siteserv. In fact, I had asked the Taoiseach about it in June. There was something to respond to. Even if the Taoiseach was not aware of it, which I find surprising, why would the Minister not inform him afterwards and inform a Deputy who had raised it that there was in fact an investigation at that stage and that the Department had very serious concerns about what was going on in Siteserv? Mike Aynsley pointed out in his interview with The Sunday Business Postthat, contrary to the notion the Minister knew little of what was going on in Siteserv, from the last quarter of 2011 there were monthly meetings with the Department and all significant transactions were being discussed with the Department and the Minister would have been aware of them.

There were numerous press reports in the aftermath of the sale and, indeed, in the run-up to the sale about serious concerns raised about the matter. One quite startling report was in the Sunday Independenton 8 April, before the parliamentary questions were asked, where Jody Corcoran writes about Denis O’Brien and Phil Hogan: "In due course, Siteserv will, no doubt, tender for state contracts, such as, for example, the installation of water meters at households around the country - a contract that will be granted by the Department of the Environment.” That is interesting. He goes on to say: “As both men are no doubt aware, it simply would not do for them to have either formal or informal meetings, nor, for that matter, for them to bump into each other over a burnt rasher, lest anybody get the wrong idea. You cannot be too careful these days." There were already suggestions in the public domain of an improper relationship between Phil Hogan and Denis O’Brien, water metering, the sale of Siteserv, the write-downs and so on.

Another fact that needs to be looked into in this matter is that Denis O’Brien got the money he used to buy Siteserv, as well as the €119 million lost to the State in the write-down on Siteserv, and possibly preferential interest rates, from Allied Irish Banks, AIB, another publicly owned bank.

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