Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At the close of business last night Deputies Conway-Walsh, Calleary and Ring raised the problems in Mayo in regard to the Oweninny wind farm. The reason Deputy Ring is beside me is we are standing in solidarity with the people who have worked on that wind farm installing up to 31 turbines, three or four of which remain to be installed. There are contractors in Mayo who are owed €1.3 million and €1.4 million. Funnily enough, years ago when this country did not have a lot of money some of these contractors were deemed fit to build airports. They were good enough to carry out roadworks throughout the country. Ironically, following on from the appointment of the receiver, the ESB and Bord na Móna, who have responsibility for this project, have decided to bring in people from the North to finish the job. I refer to two northern companies, one of which has an association with a large corporate here, but the other has none.

There are companies employing a lot of people in the west of Ireland. Basically, Roadbridge was a name. They had people with suits looking after the job but the work on the ground was being done by what we would call local subcontractors. At least €4 million or €5 million is owed to those subcontractors. It must be borne in mind also that as the ESB is connected to the Government, as is Bord na Móna, we are talking about taxpayers' money.

While we talk about the future and the wind energy future, I put it to the Minister that it is disgusting and something is not right in this situation. Those subcontractors who had put in the work, joined together with the Roadbridge workers and the contractors that were supplying everything, including materials and machines, to put in a proposal to the so-called director who was over this wind farm belonging to the ESB. Ironically enough, Deputy Ring and I have been trying to make contact for two weeks, going through the liaison and through the channels we are supposed to go through, to try to contact this person for a meeting. Whoever they think they are, or how high up they think they are, they do not think it is good enough to even come back to us to say that they will have a meeting. A proposal has been made by the group of people who are well fit to do the work. The bottom line is that it was this group that built the 27 turbines that have been built up to now. Those companies will not survive if they lose €1.3 million or €1.4 million on one job. I would like the ESB and Bord na Móna to hear clearly the point that on the bottom of the dockets for the goods and services that were supplied, it says these are owned by those companies until they are paid for. Let ESB and Bord na Móna hear this clearly.

Then they insult this group of people by bringing down other contractors to look at finishing the job. There is a retention fund of €4 million to €5 million left. There are solutions to this. I acknowledge the work done by Matthew Lynch in the office of the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, who liaised with us and with the Irish Plant Contractors Association in the past few weeks to help sort out the problems for workers. This is not in my constituency but all of those Deputies and I are very clear: let nobody think that they are going to come from the North and basically turn over companies in the west of Ireland who are well capable of doing the job. The Government must intervene.

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