Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendment relates to the order that appoints a Minister as the majority shareholding Minister. As I said, at present, the Bill provides that a Minister could become the majority shareholder. This relates to the functioning of Gas Networks Ireland, GNI. I was not able to move amendment No. 4 in respect of amending the functions and mandate of GNI. We have previously discussed how we ensure that bodies such as GNI, Bord na Móna, Coillte and so forth are operating in a way that is consistent with Ireland's goals, ambitions and obligations under the Paris Agreement and the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. During such discussions, members of the Government have consistently spoken about one point. I believe some in the Government are open to the idea of shifting, amending, improving and strengthening the mandates so that they are consistent, but they have referenced again and again the Government's role as shareholders. If we are doing things through legislation properly, as public representatives, I always prefer to ensure things are transparently there in the mandates of organisations.Legislation is the better and more transparent way to do that, but what we have heard from the Government is that it uses its shareholding status as one of the ways it seeks to influence these bodies. This amendment recognises that whatever Minister takes on the role of being the majority shareholder will potentially have a substantial input in terms of the shareholders' letters of expectation and so forth, and so it matters who that is and what mandate the Department holds.

Amendment No. 5 would require that when a Minister is being appointed as a majority shareholder, that appointment would have to be approved by both Houses of the Oireachtas. It would ensure accountability and transparency in the process. Currently, section 9 provides that the majority shareholding Minister may not be the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications or the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. On Committee Stage, I tried to ensure it would not be the Minister for Finance either, because if there are conflicts of interest designated within each of those Departments, that is also the case with the Minister for Finance. We have seen shareholding Ministers issuing letters, for example, in relation to Coillte and Bord na Móna. The shareholder letter of expectation stated it wanted cash returns. The priority was not any of the environmental targets or any of the other issues we might expect from Coillte but to get cash returns. Again, the priority was not even long-term value for money from the State but the delivery of cash in the short term. Given that is the kind of thing that has gone into ministerial letters of expectation as shareholders in the past, the Minister issuing the letters of shareholding matters.

I again suggest that it would be appropriate that when that Minister is being giving this significant power as the majority shareholder, the decision would be approved by the Oireachtas. Perhaps we would then have a little bit of transparency around what that specific Minister would bring or what kinds of communications or expectations he or she would bring as the public representative with a shareholding in that company. That is a reasonable attempt to bring transparency, accountability, and effective public policy delivery to an area which has been a little without scrutiny in the past.