Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We had detailed briefing from the Minister's officials yesterday morning and we spent nearly two hours with them. They gave us some documentation. I have looked at the structure set out in that documentation. I am not an expert on company law but I have served as a chairperson of a small company and I can tell the Minister that this process and structure will not work. It cannot because that structure is dependent on too many agreements. If any part of it goes, one leg will be pulled from under the stool. Furthermore, the Minister is in a position where he has agreed that eight of the nine members of the board of National Broadband Ireland, NBI, will be representing the entity that is putting in the least amount of money. The taxpayer, as we know and as confirmed in the documentation made available yesterday, is putting in the bulk of the cash but he who is paying the piper is not calling the tune. The board of NBI is controlled. I probed this yesterday with the Minister's senior officials and with the Secretary Department of the Department. Those who will be appointed to the board will be put on it by David McCourt and the investors. Those are the people who will be appointed to it, not the Minister and not a representative of this House or of any future Government. We will have only one vote at the board table where the key decisions will be made. The Minister has tied the hands of future Governments behind their backs with this decision. That process cannot work. There are too many complications in it and it depends on too many factors and moving parts. Worse than that, in terms of the board, which is supposed to hold the middle of the structure together, the private investors have the Minister's arm twisted up his back. Those are the facts. Is the Minister not concerned about that?

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