The Oireachtas committee investigating Iarnrod Eireann's signalling project will seek powers to compel witnesses to attend hearings, its chairman said yesterday.
Mr Sean Doherty, the Fianna Fail TD, said this would enable a sub-committee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport to proceed with a full inquiry into the affair.
The last such investigation was in 1999, when the Committee of Public Accounts examined large-scale evasion of DIRT by the State's major banks.
A barrister, Mr Frank Clarke SC, has been appointed to advise the committee. He also advised the public accounts committee during its DIRT hearings.
The public enterprise committee is seeking to find out how a £14 million (€17.8 million) signalling contract has already cost CIE £25£40 million and remains incomplete. The committee will approach the Government whip to seek powers of compulsion when the Dail resumes after the St Patrick's Day break, Mr Doherty said.
In the absence of compellability, only members of Oireachtas committees enjoy legal privilege at ordinary hearings, protecting them from the laws on libel and defamation. All those compelled to appear before such committees enjoy privilege.
In addition to the cost overruns, the committee will investigate how four Iarnrod Eireann figures who worked on its signalling project with Modern Networks Ltd left the State company to join it.
Mr Doherty has also said the committee would investigate, if pertinent, how the signalling network had high-end broadband capacity that Irish Rail may choose to sell.
In a report on the project last year, consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that the agreement Iarnrod Eireann reached with Modern Networks failed to meet any of its procurement objectives. The contract was so unspecific in the context of the rail company's needs as to be no more than a general statement of intent between the parties, it added.
Chaired by Mr Doherty, the sub-committee will have six members - three from Fianna Fail; two from Fine Gael; and one from the Labour Party.
