
16May 2015
terms. As to wealth taxes, at the
moment taxing property is often taxing
the gross value rather than the (nega-
tive) equity. People paying property tax
on a debt should get relief and pay only
on the value net of debt.
I move on to Siteserv the focus on
which is probably her biggest achieve-
ment in politics and which brings
together many of things she claims are
deficient in the political process: trans-
parency, institutional weakness etc. It
has made her one of the most talked
about politicians of the year. What does
think of how she’s been treated by Min-
ister for Finance, Michael Noonan, and
Siteserv?
Siteserv put out a statement saying
they were sick of her questions and que-
rying her motivation but she’s there to
serve her constituents. She wasn’t
impressed by Michael Noonan’s distinc-
tion between a parliamentary reply and
Freedom of Information (FoI), which he
felt required more detail. Parliamentary
replies come back with privilege. FoIs
do not. She accepts that they’re appro-
priate for background information. But
it’s important there’s maximum infor-
mation. “We always felt we were right to
be asking these questions, even though
they were obviously not being answered
by Minister Noonan. We need to know
more about some of the processes. How
was €m paid to shareholders?”.
There may have been an illegality in
trading in Siteserv shares in the run up
to the announcement that shareholders
would benefit, and she’s written to the
stock exchange asking it to explain the
process between it and the ODCE etc,
though the stock exchange is saying
nothing. She’s obviously got damning
information about the share trading,
but she significantly doesn’t think the
rest was necessarily illegal. There’s a lot
that hasn’t been answered, she thinks,
but she’s asking more and more ques-
tions. She thinks KPMG are conflicted
“all over the place”. Unless they come
back with an adverse finding no-one
will believe them. KPMG accountants
Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richard-
son, the special liquidators of IBRC are
investigating transactions where IBRC
made big capital losses. We’re only an
hour from London and Dublin is a small
town, she notes knowingly. “There are a
lot of Davy linkages”. The terms of ref-
erence allows the KPMG investigators
to select which cases to look at – a Get
out of Jail for them, she considers. It’s
also not clear if the €m threshold for
capital losses which may be investi-
gated is before any discount is applied,
or after. She goes on about the extraor-
dinary litany of strange conduct. The
relationship between the minister and
his officials needs scrutiny, she feels.
Turning the promissory notes into sov-
ereign debt and the liquidation of IBRC
may have been done in a suspicious
rush as a consequence of some of what
was going on between the Department
and IBRC. Noonan misled when he
implied in answer to her questions that
relations between his department and
Mike Aynsley, boss of IBRC, were good.
FoI shows they were not. Noonan said
he relied on Dukes’ belief that every-
thing was above board. But his officials
were advising an independent review
was needed. They should have asked for
more information. The officials come
out okay from the FoI except that Min-
ister Simon Harris says there was a
two-day meeting in August
between John Moran, then head of the
Department of Finance, and IBRC, for
which there are no minutes but at which
Siteserv was discussed. Aynsley and
Dukes are contradicting him saying
Siteserv wasn’t even discussed.
If it wasn’t discussed it gives the lie to
the Minister’s claim that he dealt with
the matter by delegating his senior civil
servant to engage with IBRC over it.
Once the bidders were narrowed down
to around bids they submitted
-page due diligence but Denis only
submitted three pages. Was it known he
was going to win, before? In June
Sierra, a Siteserv subsidiary which ulti-
mately won the water metering
contract, began hiring in specialist staff
for water-meter installation. They were
ahead of the game. Did they too know
that they were going to get the metering
contract? Sierra wasn’t even formed as
a company when it got that contract.
The competition authority absurdly
looked on the transaction as a media
takeover even though it wasn’t. “IBRC
said the only reason Siteserv won was
price. If it turns out there were other
reasons there’s a real scandal on our
hands”.
She admits she knows lots of things
that she can’t reveal. The bidding proc-
ess was a figleaf.
Questions. Questions. Questions.
I ask if she enjoys the job: “Look at, I
enjoyed being a county councillor. I’m
looking for tangible results on matters
that are important to me and the people
who elected me. Sometimes those can
be for an individual. For example we
recently matched up a person with a
disability with a journalist, and got a
great result. I get a great buzz out of
that. Isn’t it nice to feel you can make a
dierence?”. •
She thinks
KPMG are
conflicted
“all over the
place…There’s
a lot of Davy
linkages
“
INTERVIEW Catherine Murphy, TD
Davy Stockbrokers – in her sights