Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State was very polite - I use that word advisedly - in his description of the whys and wherefores of the demise of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. In 2010, Sinn Féin welcomed the investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General into the DDDA on the grounds that it had presided over dodgy deals and developments. Indeed, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report in February 2012 found evidence of serious mismanagement, very poor governance and what I would regard as malpractice within that authority, and recommended that the assets of the DDDA be disposed of. On 31 May 2012, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government announced the Government's intention to dissolve the authority, giving its reasons for dissolution, as the Minister has this evening, as the precarious financial outlook and the latest Comptroller and Auditor General's report.

It is important to record the scale of the calamity that befell the DDDA. The Minister attributes it in the main to external factors - and there is no question that these played a part - but there is much more to the story than that. The gross mismanagement and bad practice that occurred within that authority should not be glossed over in this Chamber. In February 2014, the public accounts committee concluded that €185 million of public money had been lost from seven property deals. CHQ, a shopping centre in the IFSC, had been bought by the DDDA for €45 million and sold for just €10 million. Other sites on the North Lotts Road were bought for €50 million and ended up with a value of just €7.8 million. Sites in the docklands bought using compulsory purchase orders were later transferred to NAMA at a fraction of their initial valuations. That is the legacy and that was the driving rationale, in the final analysis, for the wind-down of the authority. We support that approach. In fact, when the detail and the scale of the debacle, particularly around the Irish Glass Bottle site, came into public view, the Government was left with little option but to wind down the DDDA.

I note that the Government made heavy play not just on the transfer of assets and liabilities, including superannuation, all of which might be regarded as technical necessities in the process of moving to Dublin City Council but it also made a number of remarks about the planning process. I would like to come back to that, perhaps not this evening, but tomorrow, when I have my time. For this evening, I am glad that in his opening comments, the Minister paid hearty tribute to the local community of the docklands, both northside and southside. He has set out quite correctly the very rich heritage of the docklands, their deep contribution to the life of this city, but also beyond this city, and the cultural legacy that they carry.

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