Fine Gael today criticised the selection of a banker as the new chief executive officer of the Railway Procurement Agency, which is responsible for the LUAS and metro projects for Dublin.
The party's transport spokesman, Mr Denis Naughten, insisted that a comprehensive statement from the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, over the selection process must be provided.
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Mr Naughten said that he couldn’t understand the rationale behind the selection given that appeared to fly in the face of the criteria set out in the advertisement for the position.
He said that "following the appointment of the new chief executive there is no member of the RPA board with the required experience.
"This is in blatant contradiction to the principle of the legislation establishing the agency" he added.
The position was advertised in the Financial Timeson March 6th. The ad said "the successful candidate will have an excellent track record in delivering major engineering projects."
Mr Naughten said that a similar situation arose in the UK over the establishment of Railtrack, ending up with the company suffering considerably from the lack of core engineering experience.
"The RPA is going down a similar line, which may well sound the death knell for the development of rail transport in Ireland," he claimed.
