Fine Gael's transport spokesman, Mr Ivan Yates TD, is to ask the joint Oireachtas Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport to investigate allegations made by a former CIE chairman, Mr Eamonn Walsh, about safety procedures and travel expenses at the company before Mr Walsh's arrival in 1995.
Mr Walsh's allegations were made in an address to CIE's board at a meeting on July 5th, 1995, the text of which was published in the Sunday Independent yesterday.
Labour's transport spokesman, Mr Emmett Stagg TD, said he would ask the committee's chairman, Mr Sean Doherty TD, whether the allegations merited an investigation. It is also understood that senior figures in the CIE group of companies feel the allegations should be aired in a public inquiry, possibly by the Public Enterprise and Transport committee.
CIE's chief executive, Mr Michael P. McDonnell, yesterday declined to comment on the allegations. Attempts to contact the company's chairman, Mr Brian Joyce, failed.
CIE's former chairman, Mr Dermot O'Leary, and its former acting chief executive, Mr Noel Kennedy, yesterday rejected Mr Walsh's allegation that business trips they made to the United States, South Africa and Australia had not yielded "one bit of value" to the company.
Mr Kennedy said: "The thing about trips abroad is that you don't get an immediate response. The response could take two to three years . . . The costs of the trips were normal costs. They were booked by our own people at competitive prices."
Said Mr O'Leary: "In so far as it was alleged that there was no value for money, that would be untrue."
Both men rejected claims by Mr Walsh that CIE's board had "not demonstrated any awareness of the paramount importance of safety procedures not only being in place, but actually independently audited and acted upon". They said CIE's rail network was "one of the safest in the world".
Mr O'Leary and Mr Kennedy also rejected an allegation by Mr Walsh that "serious weaknesses" in CIE's auditing, IT and internal control systems "could lead to a total collapse of our accounting system at any time". Mr O'Leary said: "The auditing procedures were absolutely correct and in accordance with what was laid down. There were proper procedures, absolutely proper and perfect procedures. That's a most unusual statement to make. The Department was absolutely satisfied that they were correct and in order."
Mr O'Leary is suing the Attorney General, Ireland and the former Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Michael Lowry, in the High Court over the circumstances of his departure from the position of CIE chairman in April 1995, about nine months into what was planned as a five-year term of office.
Mr O'Leary said he had initiated a Supreme Court challenge to a ruling in the High Court that certain matters of evidence in the case were inadmissible.
A spokesman for the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, said she could make no comment on the allegations made in 1995 by Mr Walsh, as Mr O'Leary's case was still before the courts.
Mr Walsh departed from the position of CIE chairman in November 1995, six months into the job. Attempts to contact him yesterday failed.
Mr O'Leary said he had never instructed Mr Kennedy to have CIE Tours International book a table for him at a Fianna Fail fundraising event in New York in November 1994, as reportedly claimed in an internal memorandum by the president of CIE Tours International, Mr Brian Stack.
"That is incorrect and untrue. The fact of the matter is that CIE Tours did not have any table at that function in New York," said Mr O'Leary. "I was a guest at [brewing firm] Anheuser-Busch's table."
He continued: "There wouldn't be anything unusual in a State company supporting such a function."
