Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Craughwell for arranging this debate. He probably knows the subject much better than most of us but he is raising very serious concerns that warrant further scrutiny and explanations. I cannot help but note the fact that this is a discussion about the privatisation of an essential public service. It seems the Government parties will never get their heads around the fact that privatisation is a failed project. We are in the middle of an energy crisis. The carving up of the ESB into EirGrid, ESB Networks and Electric Ireland has proven disastrous and is preventing us now from delivering for households. We went from having the lowest cost of energy to the highest cost of energy by privatising our electricity sector. Bord Gáis Energy, a subsidiary of the British-owned Centrica, was also privatised. Its operating profits surged by 74% in the first half of this year but we cannot recoup them because it was sold off in 2013. We sold off Aer Lingus, our airline, and look at the disaster we are seeing now in terms of the service it is offering to customers. I could go on. It is very clear that the Government today has not learned the lessons of previous Governments when it looks at privatising yet another public service. A service such as the Coast Guard is fundamental to any State and to see that being privatised is a disgrace. Sinn Féin believes in public services and public ownership for the public good. Apart from the fact that we always sell off our assets and our State silver in privatisation, we also do not seem to learn any lessons from the procurement processes of large projects. The children's hospital has been cited as one such example where there is a bottomless pit of public money. Sinn Féin representatives have spoken in the House on many occasions on ways to improve the procurement process; not only in terms of having better oversight and transparency, but also around having a social element to it and ensuring it is not just the lowest cost bidder that gets the tender. When we are tendering out to procurement using public money, the communities in those areas should benefit. We should not just look at the profit line but should take other factors into account as well.

Senator Craughwell is right to raise the issue around the Secretary General declining to appear before the Oireachtas joint committee. In setting out his reasoning, the Secretary General emphasised the importance of ensuring that tendering companies are treated equally and in a transparent, proportionate, manner. It is hard to fathom how somebody can come to the mental gymnastics required to say that appearing before a Oireachtas joint committee would jeopardise transparency. With all due respect, it is some feat of mental gymnastics to use that excuse. The Oireachtas joint committee has an important role in the governance and oversight of procurement. The EU directive quoted by the Secretary General, namely, EU Directive 2014/24/EU, which was used to defend not appearing before the committee publically is very clear about the function of oversight. I do not know whether it was a mistake in using that directive as justification or they were hoping that people would not actually read the directive. It states that where monitoring authorities or structures, such as the Oireachtas joint committee, are informed of or investigate information on specific violations or problems that "they shall be empowered to indicate those problems to national auditing authorities, courts or tribunals or other appropriate authorities or structures, such as the ombudsman, national parliaments or committees thereof". Either the directive was not read or it was deliberately misrepresented. The State has made several blunders recently in terms of procurement. The emergency electricity generation also failed to deliver because of the procurement process. Very serious questions have been raised and we deserve to have answers when we are spending public money, especially on something as important as the Coast Guard service.