Shane Ross (Independent)

Will the Leader ask the Minister for Transport to come to the House as a matter of urgency? The House may not be aware of the fact that CIE is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Joint Committee on Transport. Yesterday, in a move which I believe is possibly unprecedented and is indefensible, the executive chairman of CIE wrote a letter stating that the non-executive directors have refused to appear before the committee to answer questions about the way CIE is governed. That is a matter of serious urgency. It is also a matter of CIE and its non-executive directors frustrating the wishes and the inquiries of the Oireachtas.

I would be particularly interested to hear what the Green Party Members have to say about this matter because they would normally support that sort of response and accountability from non-executive directors. If corporate governance of semi-State bodies is to be used just to appoint political hacks who refuse to be accountable to the Oireachtas, there is no point in having these joint committees and we can allow these semi-State bodies to run amok.

CIE is being investigated for good reasons. It found some corruption inside its organisation and because the board never saw the €500,000 report that was commissioned by certain executives in CIE. Board members did not even know about it, nor did the Minister. Now, the non-executive directors who are paid by State money and appointed by the Minister and former Ministers are giving the two fingers to us and telling us they will not appear before the committee to say what is happening or what they knew or did not know. This is a serious situation and it will make FÁS look like Scrooge if we do not get to the bottom of what is happening to the money in CIE. That organisation receives €300 million a year in a State subsidy and, when we ask it what is happening to that money, its board says we can go and jump in a lake.

The Minister must come to the House to tell Members if he will stand for the executive chairman doing that because many of these people are his appointments and those of his predecessors . Even having an executive chairman, Mr. John Lynch, is in itself a breach of corporate governance and should not be allowed.