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

On Western Business Systems, I raised this issue in the House in September 2017 and specifically asked, in light of fire defects in schools, the likelihood of such defects being more widespread, as well as raising the fact that a college of further education built by Western Building Systems in Whitehall has been sitting empty for the past five or six years, which was not mentioned in the recent public discussion of the issue. This is incredible. I raised all of these issues last September. We were told that a review would be carried out by January of this year. I stated that Western Building System should be excluded from getting public contracts. It has taken until now for us to get to that discussion because nothing was done and we were ignored and told these are the rules and that is the way it is. It is a disaster. It would be helpful people on the Government side of the House listened to us sometimes.

I wish to ask about Dún Laoghaire Harbour, which is of national, cultural and economic importance as well as vital for transport and many other matters.

I am very glad to see that after years of campaigning by the local community, including myself, the harbour company is to be dissolved and transferred to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. However, we now discover, as I said to the Taoiseach when he was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, that there were massive governance and financial problems in the harbour company. I told him about massive salaries, bonuses being handed out and crazy money being spent on consultants and projects. Now we discover that after all the delay on the part of the Taoiseach and successive Ministers for Transport, Tourism and Sport, although we get the victory of the harbour being handed over, there is a major financial mess involving debts and maintenance work that was not done. Meanwhile, the individual who was chief executive officer, CEO, during the years when the Taoiseach was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport is suing the company of which he was CEO for a performance-related bonus of €410,000. Last year, the harbour company did not even put in the accounts for 2017. It is an absolute mess and the Government allowed it to happen. Will the Taoiseach intervene and help Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to sort out the financial mess that successive Ministers, including the Taoiseach, created in Dún Laoghaire harbour?

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