Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome this section which deals with standards of integrity and places a statutory obligation on the employees and chief executive of the company. There is a lacuna in much of our legislation in this area. There is a need to place a statutory obligation on the CEO of and other senior managers in the IFI or similar companies to adhere to good corporate governance practice, especially in financial and general management matters to ensure value for money is achieved for the taxpayer. I have been told before that this is understood, but it is not. It was not understood by the chief executive of FÁS that there was this obligation on him. If there was such a statutory obligation and it was flagrantly breached by somebody, the Government would be in a position to dispense with the services of that individual without additional compensation. We have seen such examples which have brought the administration of public services into disrepute. People were paid huge sums of money on termination of their employment, especially where they had demonstrably failed to carry out their duties in a reasonable manner that would have been expected by any employer availing of their services.

I welcome the provision on integrity, but the commercial requirements of ensuring value for money for the taxpayer and complying with and operating to the best standards of corporate governance mean wastefulness and profligacy in a public company should constitute grounds for dismissal. That would place an onus on persons in senior public positions to use the resources of the company in a way that would stand up to scrutiny. Given recent serious failures, we should be looking to insert this in as a provision. While I welcome the provision on integrity, we need to go beyond it a little.