Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

Not the Senator, and not the other fellow either.

There was widespread consultation and discussion with a broad spectrum of people in the port sector at that time. The Senator asked about the composition of the eight new directors. The chief executive officer of each company will be a member of the board, there will be a worker director and six ministerial appointees, one of whom will be a local authority member.

With regard to some of the Senator's comments, I do not know if this view has come from tribunals or elsewhere but we appear to go through decades or periods of life where certain things are fashionable. All these professional reports noted that commercial ports are being treated differently from other State commercial companies. There are no local authority members on the boards of other commercial companies, semi-State bodies or the airport bodies. The ports are the only commercial State companies that have local authority members on their boards.