Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take the opportunity to congratulate the Minister of State on his promotion.

I welcome some of what he has said on the Corporate Enforcement Authority. If ever there was a place that needed such an entity to be fit for purpose it is obviously this State. Unfortunately, as we get a lesson about 2012, it is a further reminder of the perception of the connectivity certain people have. There are relationships that exist. People have trips and holidays together and have conversations, meaning that at times things can be arranged no matter what the paperwork actually shows at the end.

Anyway, we are dealing with the Siteserv transaction. People have spoken about unacceptable behaviour tainted by impropriety. That is the biggest issue. I do not know what term to use. The Minister of State spoke about underplaying. It goes without saying that it is absolutely underplaying given the circumstances we are dealing with.

A number of Deputies have gone through the ins and outs of this. Siteserv was founded in 2004 by Mr. Harvey and Mr. McFadden. By 2008, it owed Anglo Irish Bank €155 million. We know the whole sordid history relating to Anglo Irish Bank and the bailout of approximately €36.4 billion. We know that in 2008 Mr. McFadden had borrowings of €7 billion with the bank and had signed personal guarantees up to €74 million. He seemed to be on the road to bankruptcy. We know there was a very close relationship between Mr. McFadden and Mr. Harvey. We now know of the relationship with Mr. O'Brien. We know of Mr. Robert Dix's involvement with this. It is fair to say they all knew each other very well and that seemed to work out reasonably well for people.

People probably find it difficult to understand given the relationship and the money owed that Mr. McFadden was on contract with Siteserv to find buyers, arrange for sales and all the rest of it. Some of this report makes for very interesting reading and we know that whatever happened from September 2011 until the close of this deal, the fact is that there was an enormous write-off of €118 million of the money owed by Siteserv to IBRC, which had previously been Anglo Irish Bank. The sale went through to, I believe, Millington for €444.3 million. This whole thing was started on the basis of another company stating it would have paid more and all the rest of it.

I agree with some of the previous speakers who said that at this point in time or at least when the commission prepared this report, we did not have the wherewithal to deal with the whole issue of corporate enforcement. I would love to see the relevant authorities in place and taking action. If we have anomalies or missing parts, be they legislative or whatever else, we need to make it happen. We know the pain people went through at the time of the economic collapse, which is again on our minds with what we are facing now. We need to ensure that we have the wherewithal to deal with all this.

We are dealing with the issue of financial impropriety in the case of Siteserv. We are talking about a time when people were going through austerity. As the Minister of State is in front of me, I wish to speak about a company that is suffering real difficulties. I refer to Suretank in Dunleer. A representative of that company spoke on LMFM radio of this morning. I spoke to Martin Winters myself. There were other businesses such as McGeough's, Rocksalt in Dundalk and also Anglo Printers in Drogheda. I would like a bit of leeway to read out a couple of lines:

We have been informed our electricity bill which was €15,000 will increase to €50,500 with effect from October 1st 2022. We have also been informed our gas bill which was €3,200 per month will increase to €18,000 per month also with effect from October 1st 2022.

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