Furious punters deliver ringing message

Eircom's 12 directors and their chairman, Mr Ray MacSharry, strutted on to the podium in the RDS yesterday to the strains of their catchy theme tune which dreamily asserts: "your love is my love" and "my love is your love".

But the punters weren't having any of it. Forget love, they said. Show us the money.

With Eircom stock still far off the flotation rate, 4,000 shareholders were content to express fury, apoplexy, grievance, hurt and pain at the performance of the company they know so well.

Mr MacSharry faced the music and there was definitely no love there. After schmoozing in the lobby before the a.g.m. began, his initial words were greeted - in a sign of things to come - with jeers. "Could I please ask you to take a moment to establish the location of the nearest exit," he said.

Given what followed, Ray might have done well to bolt for the door there and then, but he stood his ground. Stood, in fact, for more than 4 1/2 hours and thanked everyone for their remarks. The critiques, comments, booing and slow-handclapping were very bad indeed.

Senator Shane Ross waltzed in with his pal Eamon Dunphy and 28,000 letters of proxy. Wagging a finger at the board with a vitriol he used to reserve for the IRA, he scorned management's share option "bonanza" and the "cartel" of institutional investors. Eircom was a dead loss, he said. No other company would touch it. Shareholders greeted the news with a standing ovation.

"Senator Ross has made some points that we can accept fully in relation to the disappointment in the share price," said Mr MacSharry.

"Resign. Why don't you resign?" cried a member of the crowd.

Yet the former finance minister did not display even an air of resignation, let alone an inclination to stand down. Known as Mac the Knife in the dog days of fiscal rectitude, he was accused of using a guillotine to cut short the meeting.

To be fair, Mr MacSharry seemed keen to let as many shareholders as possible speak - but neatly sidestepped the tricky questions.

A man who said he was in the "unfortunate position" of being an Eircom worker and shareholder asked whether the firm's chief executive, Alfie Kane, had been censured for stating publicly that its flotation price was too high.

Mr MacSharry's response? "The chief executive expressed a view and there is no point in dwelling on it."

In the main hall of the RDS, shareholders voted against a share incentive plan and Mr Kane's re-election to the board.

Citing the "old pals act", shareholder Mr Sean Kelly claimed the board could not care less about Eircom's performance. "You're a thundering disgrace," he told Mr MacSharry. Laughter.

When board member Dick Spring was asked why he held no Eircom shares, the former tanaiste and minister for foreign affairs said he "didn't have cash" to buy the stock. More laughter. Yet Mr Spring's fellow socialists, Tony Gregory and Tomas Mac Giolla, bought shares. In the darkened hall, with its elaborate sound system, chaperones wired up with fancy earplugs stood watch throughout while a battalion of six strong-chinned security people guarded the podium.

Some board members sipped their fizzy water and some chewed gum. Nine of the 12 said nothing at all. Mary O'Rourke was nowhere to be seen.