DUP criticises State's 'Energy Supply Board'

CurrentAccount: The ESB has accumulated plenty of enemies over the years. But Current Account was not aware until this week that ESB had become a target for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This week in the House of Commons Sammy Wilson, MP for East Antrim, made it very clear he held the electricity company in low regard.

"The ESB does not have a good record in delivering power. In Northern Ireland, 76 minutes of supply are lost per household per year; in the Irish Republic, 162 minutes are lost," he told the House of Commons.

Mr Wilson was also clear about why power is sometimes lost in the Republic. "That is because of a problem with the network, and like much in the Celtic tiger, outside the greater Dublin area one finds serious inefficiencies and defects. We have to be sure that funding for the all-Ireland energy market will not be used to address the ESB's inefficiencies," he explained to his fellow parliamentarians.

His comments have more than a ring of truth to them, but his remarks lacked a certain authority. This might be because the member for East Antrim referred throughout to a company called the "Energy Supply Board" (ESB). Unfortunately, as any school pupil knows, the company is called the Electricity Supply Board (ESB).

There are plans for a new North-South electricity grid, but if Stormont is eventually restored and ministers once again enter office, one wonders whether it might be wise for Sammy Wilson to avoid the energy portfolio.

ECJ case considers pharmacist regulations

Current Account commends Sam McAuley for taking on the might of the Government at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the subject of foreign-educated pharmacists. Under current rules, pharmacists educated outside the Republic are not permitted to open a new pharmacy here or to manage an outlet if it has been open within the previous three years.

Fair enough, you might think, if the pharmacist has been trained in an alien environment or in a language other than English. Where the rule becomes particularly ludicrous, however, is in the case of pharmacists educated in the North, where Queen's University has for years been churning out hordes of pharmacists to stop a growing gap in the Celtic Tiger economy's need for such professionals.

This sees Queen's pharmacists holding extremely senior roles within large chains in the Republic, often managing scores of staff, but without actually being allowed to manage a single new shop on their own.

Not only do these pharmacists receive their training on the same island as those educated in the Republic, but they also learn to operate in an extremely similar professional environment. And on top of all this (if we really want to go there) presuming they are from the North in the first place, they are also as Irish as their equivalents in the South.

The real body that needs to answer questions in this regard is of course the Irish Pharmaceutical Union, which originally challenged the management appointment that led to Mr McAuley's ECJ case being taken.

Chadwick hedges bets

In Cheltenham week, Grafton boss Michael Chadwick this week illustrated the importance of hedging one's bets. The builder's merchants and DIY group disclosed significant profit growth last year on the back of a strong performance among its Irish businesses.

Attention then turned to the outlook for the current year, at which point Grafton's finance director Colm Ó Nualláin pointed out that Grafton could expect an exceptional gain from the sale of the prime two-acre Atlantic Homecare site in Sandyford Industrial Estate in south Dublin.

As Ó Nualláin detailed the scale of bid that might be expected to secure the site, Chadwick intervened quickly to indicate the bottom of a suitable price range.

Anyone with less than €25 million can now look elsewhere.