Docklands accounts to show €50m hole

THE 2008 accounts of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority are expected to be published tomorrow and to show a hole of approximately €50 million.

The accounts are expected to show writedowns in the value of properties of about €186 million, and an operating loss of about €27 million.

These and other factors will mean the €177 million surplus that was on the authority’s accounts at the end of 2007 will disappear, and be replaced by a net liability of €50 million.

The authority, and its recently appointed chairman, Prof Niamh Brennan, are expected to ask the Government for financial help and to say they believe the authority can be returned to viability.

The writedowns include the authority’s 26 per cent interest in the Glass Bottle site in Ringsend, bought three years ago at the height of the boom by a consortium that included the authority, Bernard McNamara and Derek Quinlan, for €412 million. In the Dáil yesterday, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said the site now had a “red book” valuation of €50 million.

He said that represented an 85 per cent drop in value. The Minister said two corporate governance reports were pending, one on planning and one on the authority’s finances.

Pressed by Fine Gael environment spokesman Phil Hogan about bringing the authority under the remit of the Comptroller Auditor General, Mr Gormley said he would keep it under review but it required a change in legislation.

Mr Hogan described the authority as “one of the biggest scandals we’ve seen for a long time” and said the regeneration of the docklands had been “hijacked by greedy bankers and developers” without any oversight.

He asked what the cost to the taxpayer would ultimately be “for the lack of proper governance practices and the type of irresponsible deals that were done in the Dublin docklands area in the last number of years”.

Mr Gormley said he had taken “decisive action” in appointing a new chairman and he had asked her for a report on corporate governance in the authority.