Mr. Paul Maloney:

Thank you, Chairman and members of the committee, for the invitation to this forum. I thank you especially because for four years I have watched aghast as Niamh Brennan issued report after report on the DDDA without ever offering an opportunity for those involved to present their views or have a say. These reports were leaked to RTE when only the Minister and Niamh Brennan had them in their possession, depriving all participants any natural justice in being able to defend themselves and creating overall the most negative one-sided destruction of the reputation of the DDDA and containing the most grievous accusations which have since been withdrawn or discredited.

Therefore, from every perspective, I most welcome the stepping in of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts. The committee has commissioned a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General which examines in depth all aspects of the DDDA's operations in a balanced, thorough and fair manner and, more importantly, from an independent perspective, and has invited me and other participants to come and be questioned, something I have been denied the past four years. I most wholeheartedly relish this opportunity. I was not obliged to accept this invitation as I am no longer an accountable officer and have not been for many years, but I am here of my own volition because I can no longer stand aside as so much misinformation and untruth have been printed about this deal. I wanted to come here to truthfully and honestly tell you exactly what transpired and why. As I had no institutional backing to come here, I want to thank Mr. McEnery, Mr. John Crawley in the authority and Arthur Cox for helping research the information for today.

In the DDDA, what I experienced was a dedicated staff, a board committed to excellence and a community at one with what we were doing and aspiring to achieve - the total transformation of a run-down, derelict and disenfranchised area and community. What we have achieved has not only been recognised nationally but has been highly respected internationally.

It is said that the membership of the board by directors of Anglo Irish Bank contributed to the unfairly critical comments that the DDDA received. If that is so, then I am here to tell you most truthfully that I never saw an act or comment or interference by an Anglo Irish Bank board member, or any director for that matter, that was not singly focused on what was within the code of conduct for the Docklands board and in the sole interests of the authority's objective.

I have never experienced the private interests of board members being raised by members other than by leaving a board meeting if they believed there was a conflict of interest. The truth is that Mr. Bradshaw, from whom you have directly heard, and his successor Mr. O'Connor, in my view, discharged their duties with utmost propriety and professionalism, and not a scintilla of evidence has ever been brought forward to suggest otherwise.

That Ms Brennan was able to make such completely unsubstantiated accusations without asking either the board members who served on the board or a single member of the executive who witnessed the entire process for ten years, and without producing evidence, is highly regrettable and deplorable. That the Committee of Public Accounts has rectified to a great extent this injustice through this fair and independent report and through its invitation to members to attend does not absolve the company of the lamentable lack of corporate governance in the Brennan report and commentary.

I reiterate also that while undoubtedly mistakes were made, and I am here to acknowledge and take accountability for those myself, I and the executive also acted with total probity and transparency in all our dealings on the purchase of the IGB with one single objective in mind - the improvement of the economic and social conditions in the area. I believe the files and records utterly reflect that transparency.

First, let me reiterate that I regard the Comptroller and Auditor General's report as fair, independent and, more importantly, fact-based, and completely devoid of the incorrect and unsubstantiated conclusions that are in the Brennan report. I want to deal with two critical aspects. The statement I am about to make has never been published in any media or ever stated anywhere. The report confirms that not one cent of taxpayers' money was ever received or spent by the DDDA, and the DDDA confirmed this to me last week - the Comptroller and Auditor General, of course, finished in 2010. It confirmed to me that it will never request taxpayers' money at any time in the future. It will close the authority and hand a significant sum back to the Exchequer. Is there a single media outlet that has reported that? It is my hope that the committee's report to the Oireachtas will dispel any notion that the DDDA lost taxpayers' money.

Second, with regard to the IGB site or any other project, in the ten years since its inception the DDDA has never received Exchequer funds. As a property company it made a profit of €130 million, lost €52 million on IGB site and made a net profit of €30 million - a gain which it invested in Docklands. There is a table in the written materials showing that. Most of that investment generated €2 billion in foreign direct investment. Even after what happened with the IGB site, there was no bailout of the authority with taxpayers' money - misinformation that has been spread not by this committee but by others - and it has paid off its own debt with its own assets which it continues to sell today. The Comptroller and Auditor General would not have been aware of this as it was not stated in the report, because it has been happening since then. This may be compared to any other private property company. The DDDA was set up by the former Ministers for the Environment and Finance, Deputies Howlin and Quinn - very properly, in my view, as a company that was independent of taxpayers - but it was a property company. If any other company were in that position today, the country would be in a different place.

Thankfully, the Comptroller and Auditor General specifies to this committee two instances in which taxpayers' money was lost, but not by the DDDA. First of all - I thank the Chairman for stating this publicly - the failure to close a loophole in the Landlord and Tenant (Ground Rents) (No. 2) Act 1978 cost the State at least €130 million. In fact, in the last committee meeting with Mr. Bradshaw, the Comptroller and Auditor General raised that to a potential figure of €275 million. This was something that was highlighted by the Law Reform Commission and not acted upon. As I said, I thank the Chairman for highlighting this.

Second, we entered a loan arrangement with a private bank independent of public funds but a State decision in the form of a bank guarantee years later and the nationalisation of banks years later resulted in the loss to the taxpayer on the IGB site. This was a decision that was completely outside the remit of the DDDA. I will leave the judgment on the fairness of all this to others, because we are at this table without having lost taxpayers' funds, and the two instances above are not here. This report was drafted and issued without me or any other member of the former board or executive - that is not a criticism - seeing it or having an opportunity to comment on it. Therefore, I must ask your indulgence to inform the committee about two critical aspects of the report.

In the statement on page 37, which has now been reiterated by the Comptroller and Auditor General, it is stated that I personally, as chief executive, sent a letter to the Department of the Environment stating that we expected to pay only €220 million for the IGB site. That statement is totally untrue. I was not the author of the letter; I did not see the letter before it was sent; I did not sign the letter. I have the letter here; it is not my signature. I have the legally based evidence to prove it.

In preparation for this appearance, I was permitted access to the data room at Arthur Cox, which carried out full discovery on all DDDA correspondence. This had recorded that the letter was produced and sent to only two persons on the executive without circulation to me. That would be normal because in that case I had delegated it to a senior manager with 20 years' experience of dealing with the Department of the Environment. This is very important, Chairman. When the departmental official dealing with ministerial sanction responded, he circulated it only to the two officials who had sent it. All of this is on a legal file. When I saw the letter at a board meeting a week later, I immediately set about correcting its contents. The statement that I am about to make now was not in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. I brought the matter up at a board meeting and the official who wrote the letter corrected the sale price to €375 million.

Who was there? It was the official from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government who was not only a member of the board but also the same official who was going to walk into the Minister's office to get that ministerial sanction. Paragraph 8.2 of the board meeting minutes of 24 October states that. Critically, this was in advance of the ministerial approval, which we know was issued by that same official later that day. The Comptroller and Auditor General has stated this was not formal information. I am here to say that, from all my experience of State boards and semi-State boards, I believe the minutes of a board meeting are the most formal legal document, an absolute record of everything that takes place at a board meeting. I have that evidence here to show to the committee. That member after a member of this committee named me as having sent this letter is disappointing. I never produced it and, more important, when I corrected it at the most formal opportunity in advance of the ministerial approval, the official involved acted with total probity. Never was it construed as a deliberate attempt to mislead the Department.

The second major statement is on the financial commitments of the authority. On page 44, at the bottom of the section, it is stated "the authority believed at the time of the signing of the shareholder agreement that its financial commitment would be limited to €35m". It goes on to say in the very next paragraph that the DDDA actually spent €44 million. These statements, taken together, are wholly misleading as they are about entirely different issues. I have brought the evidence to prove it.

I am no longer working in this sector and I work abroad mainly so I spent some time confirming in writing, only last week, what I am about to say regarding the DDDA finance director who holds the records of the authority. The shareholder agreement is divided into two financial commitments, the first concerning borrowing liabilities and the second concerning loan stock or equity. I have produced two simple tables so there will be no dichotomy. The first shows the equity commitment. The equity was the €32.8 million that we said we would spend in the shareholder agreement. We spent exactly €32.8 million. On the interest for the loan, we said we would spend €9 million. We spent €11.1 million and it was limited to two years, as we said in the shareholder agreement. That is not stated in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

On the cap that is mentioned so many times, the cap did not refer to the above. It referred to the recourse of €26 million that the authority was guaranteeing and the interest again for two years. This came to €35 million. The actual liability increased to €29.1 million but on the basis of a subsequent board decision to make an increase for the decontamination of the site. The interest was €11.1 million, which I will cover later. In other words, based on the evidence I have brought and confirmed, the DDDA did not substantially overextend its commitments.

I accept – this is why I congratulated the Comptroller and Auditor General – that this was not a deliberate statement by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The detail is provided elsewhere in this report, but when it was presented in this manner it was concluded by members and the media that there was considerable over-expenditure based on the cap that was mentioned and in the sequence presented. In short, it is my critical evidence to this committee that liabilities and commitments signed up to in the shareholder agreement were fully adhered to. If not, there are recorded decisions as to why.

I agree with the Comptroller and Auditor General on the issue of interest liability, which he did say increased. During the submission of my evidence, which is complex and comprehensive, I will deal with that.

Other major points to note are that the DDDA paid €20 million per acre for the site when docklands sites had recently been sold for €40 million per acre. In Ballsbridge, sites had been sold for €50 million per acre. The DDDA had obtained an independent valuation only ten months old and it had qualified, professional, nationally certified Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, RICS, surveyors to advise it. It is not mentioned in this report. We employed the RICS surveyors. I have the evidence of that.

NAMA has publicly stated that the DDDA was treated the same as all other private bodies. There was no special deal and it paid NAMA with its own assets. It paid its debts with its own assets and it paid off its loans. Today it is in a positive position to hand back the money to the Exchequer after all liabilities, including the IGB, are discharged. There is no taxpayers’ money or taxpayers’ liability at stake.

Does any member of this committee know why Mr. Moylan, a highly reputable chairman of Mason Hayes & Curran, resigned from his position having completed his report into the DDDA? Only one journalist, from The Irish Times, has published the truth behind it. Mr. Moylan has gone on record to say that Ms Brennan tried to change his conclusions on the report because those conclusions did not blame executives. I commend Mr. Moylan on his refusal to cave in to such demands. I very much welcome the proposal of Deputy Donohoe, who is not present today, to open a strand on this report and call Mr. Moylan as a witness.

I thank the chairman for his indulgence. I am proud of every single moment I spent at the DDDA. It involved my working with disadvantaged communities and delivering an architectural and economic legacy to the city and, more important, jobs for the economy. In my current position, I am doing that abroad now. Excluding the many thousands employed in the construction sector, many other jobs were created. I was present the day that Facebook executives visited the docklands to choose between Dublin and other European capitals. It was a highly sought-after prize and they chose it. They chose the very site that the DDDA had developed with its own funds. Formerly, it was a barren, dilapidated, abandoned site and we now know it as Grand Canal Square and the location of the Bord Gáis Theatre. It was an astonishing achievement for the DDDA, the city of Dublin, the IDA and Ireland. Thousands of jobs are now being created in the area. Independent property analysts state the recovery in the property market is most prevalent in the Docklands area.

What the DDDA left behind will lead recovery in the property and jobs markets. IGB is no ghost site; it is on the doorstep of the hub of this recovery and will be a valuable asset in the recovery. Why did we buy it? The best business case I have ever seen produced to buy a site was made by a multidisciplinary group of professionals, politicians, the local community and government representatives in the docklands as far back as 1997, and in 2003 and 2006. Those concerned pinpointed the business case as to why the site should be bought.

The core business of the DDDA was to purchase, sell and hold property. This was not a once-off, fly-by-night objective. Of course, I regret this investment has ended up as it has. I am here today of my own volition to be fully accountable for any errors that I made. I regret, though, that when others and I limited our liability to 26%, which I regard as highly responsible, handed over a cheque of some €140 million to the port or State and embarked on a mission to deliver social and economic gains to the State, neither I nor my executive board could have foretold that the banks, the Financial Regulator, the Central Bank and others that controlled our financial system would see that almost collapse 18 months later, and that the bank guarantees would see the State taking control of what was private equity risk in the IGB site.

I look forward to answering every question truthfully and honestly to this committee. What I will not do – this has nothing to do with this committee but I must put it on the public record – is take any supposition or proposition that comes from someone who, at this time, served in Ulster Bank for six years and at the end of whose tenure lost billions of euro, let 2,000 staff go and did not in any way-----