Laurence MacKenzie – Slugger O'Toole

Serious allegations emerge from MacKenzie’s early life in Scotland

Mick Fealty on January 10, 2011, 11:06 am

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What did Conor Murphy think this morning as he read his copy of the Scottish Daily Record? If Charlie Gall is right (and so far as Slugger understands, as yet there’s been no legal challenge to what are some very grave allegations), then the Minister not only trashed the reputations of four Non Executive Directors, in order to retain Chief Executive who so spectacularly failed in the discharge of his duties over Christmas, but that man, whom his Minister fought tooth …

NI Water: How Murphy’s sackings left MacKenzie accountable directly to DRD

Mick Fealty on January 7, 2011, 9:39 am

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Fed up with drinking copious amounts of Northern Ireland Water stories on Slugger? Not as fed up as I am writing them. We kicked off back in July after that PAC when no one but the Belfast Telegraph (who have taken a ‘MacKenzie loyalist’ line throughout), whilst an industrious Jamie Delargy was working on it sub rosa at UTV was giving it anything more than a cursory glance. Six months later, a Chief Executive has gone and Regional Development, has …

NI Water: Yet another expensive review slouches into view…

Mick Fealty on January 6, 2011, 10:47 am

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So after just one year and seven months in post, the latest person to leave the shambles that is NI Water is Laurence MacKenzie. Negotiations on the exact terms of his departure only concluded at 12 Midnight last night. The final figure is thought to be about £96,000 (note, that’s not been confirmed). The Board is recommending that Trevor Hazlett, a civil engineer with 30 years experience at NI Water (and direct responsibility for industrial procurement), as MacKenzie’s replacement. Hazlett …

NI Water: Any convenient ‘troubled’ port in a storm?

Mick Fealty on January 4, 2011, 10:42 pm

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Interesting quote from Liam Mulholland who in the absence of any substantial public appearance from his boss, the CEO of NI Water Laurence MacKenzie, puts the blame on the Troubles (for any foreign journalists reading, you might like to note these ‘officially’ ended back in 1994) for his company’s poor reaction to the extreme freeze thaw weather conditions of the last two weeks. The clear imputation is that politicians were to blame, even though it was Mr MacKenzie himself was so …

NI Water: Did whistle-blowing lead to a switch in contract?

Mick Fealty on October 14, 2010, 9:22 am

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I’ve uploaded this whistleblower correspondence. What passes as acceptable practice in DRD at the most senior level, does not measure up to its own policy standards. Here we have a complaint to the Permanent Secretary from the owner of Contracting Out, Sue Holmes. The original complaint is not included, but you can see from the paper trail that despite an explicit request from the complainent that the correspondence not be shared with anyone but the addressee. Within three hours on a …

NI Water: A serious management problem for Mr MacKenzie

Mick Fealty on October 8, 2010, 2:38 pm

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Both the Irish News and the News Letter have stories on a damning staff survey at Northern Ireland Water, taken months after the Board was removed which demonstrates that a serious management problem has set in under the stewardship of Laurence MacKenzie. For example, see this data on areas which identified as’ needing improvement’ (remember 60% is considered a poor score requiring ‘considerable focus’) Some of the attitudes might be attributable to external factors. For instance some of the 22% …

NI Water: How Mr MacKenzie jettisoned millions in commercial savings…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2010, 8:39 am

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Adrian Rutherford was pretty close to the mark with his suggestion in Wednesday night’s paper edition of the Belfast Telegraph that Northern Ireland Water may have been ordered by the courts to pay out up to £10 Million in back payments to the French IT contractor Steria. In dispute had been payments for services to enable the charging of domestic water rates. Water rates which, of course, were never collected. To paraphrase NI Water’s Chief Executive’s presentation to the Public Accounts …

Consumer Council CEO: “Trust has broken down between some of the partners in the Partnership Agreement”

Pete Baker on September 20, 2010, 6:51 pm

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Strange timing by the Chief Executive of the Consumer Council for Northern Ireland, Antoinette McKeown, to declare that the body is withdrawing from the Stakeholders Partnership Agreement with NI Water and the Department for Regional Development. The UTV report suggests the release of emails between McKeown and Laurence MacKenzie was the cause of the breakdown of trust… In an unprecedented move, the Consumer Council says it has now lost trust in the company and the Government Department led by Conor Murphy. “To leak …

NI Water: So just how many STAs was DRD using?

Mick Fealty on September 17, 2010, 6:29 pm

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This Assembly Questions to the DRD Minister Conor Murphy should flush out some interesting answers about the use of Single Tender Actions inside the Department: 2. Mr P McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister for Regional Development how many single tender actions were issued by (i) Roads Service; (ii) Translink; and (iii) the Harbour Commissioner in (a) 2005/06; (b) 2006/07; (c) 2007/08; (d) 2008/09; and (e) 2009/10. 3. Mr P McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister for Regional …

NI Water: MacKenzie ‘cleared’ according to his own company’s records…

Mick Fealty on September 17, 2010, 4:44 pm

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I was away from Slugger Central for most of yesterday, tending to the needs of the day job (sorry!!). One fascinating little story appeared in the News Letter. Sam McBride notes: …in a move which is highly unusual in FoI responses, the public body threatened to take legal action if the revelation was ‘misreported’. “Any attempt to misreport or misrepresent NI Water’s position in this regard will be dealt with appropriately and if necessary by legal action,” it said. Misreported, …

NI Water: ICO looking into MacKenzie’s deleted email…

Mick Fealty on September 14, 2010, 3:54 pm

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Yesterday Diana Rusk in the Irish News noted that NI Water supremo Laurence McKenzie just happened to delete that controversial email text which Paul Priestley sent him, a full 17 days after receiving it. But an FOI response from NI Water reveals he deleted it the day after NI Water received an FOI requesting it. The request was eventually granted. Following a complaint from the person who made the original request, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in Belfast is looking …

NI Water: Is the Audit Office about to take the gloves off?

Mick Fealty on September 8, 2010, 12:13 am

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One of the most interesting aspect of this story is the degree to which most of the mainstream media (pace UTV and the News Letter) does not seem to understand what led to the point at which the Northern Ireland Audit Office is now going into the offices of NI Water to examine their financial record keeping against the findings of an Internal Audit. Interestingly they are also going to be looking at legacy issues from the days when the …

“As far as I’m concerned it’s business as usual.”

Pete Baker on August 23, 2010, 11:13 pm

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Perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase deployed by the Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy, of a department whose Permanent Secretary has just been suspended pending investigation over the NI Water saga – ostensibly for surreptitiously drafting a letter of complaint to the PAC [for a third party]. Meanwhile, UTV’s Jamie Delargy reports that Northern Ireland Electricity has also been guilty of not putting out some contracts to competitive tendering. While the proper process was followed with some of the …

NI Water: Waiting for the FOIs to appear…

Mick Fealty on July 22, 2010, 2:36 pm

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There are some really interesting (unhysterical) conversations (scroll down) being stirred up by the NI Water story, if it can yet be called a story. All we have so far are fragmentary threads the substance of which barely adds up to the sum of the parts. That’s because we are waiting for FOI requests to be returned from some of the several institutional parties to the ‘story’. What matters in all of this is not the sacking of the NEDs …

NI Water: Contractor starts legal proceedings against MacKenzie and the Bel Tel

Mick Fealty on July 20, 2010, 12:04 pm

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Slugger understands that Sue Holmes – whose contract with NI Water sparked what some might term an internal witch hunt – has started legal proceedings against the Belfast Telegraph and Laurence MacKenzie for an alleged breach of a confidentiality agreement she signed with NI Water. Slugger understands Ms Holmes also has other actions in play. Given Mr MacKenzie’s recent directive against any member of staff talking to UTV, it is not clear how this news will go down inside the …

NI Water Timeline: “Administrative procedures are the responsibility of management…”

Mick Fealty on July 16, 2010, 10:55 am

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I’ve been working on a timeline of the NI Water story just to try and put some of the material we have into some kind of objective order… I’ve gone for completion rather than trying to hone in on any one aspect… However a number of things jump out… One is how long Priestly is in post before any of the problems identified by MacKenzie emerge (Hansard also tells us Nicola Brennan conducted three successive audits without finding them either). Two, …

NI Water: Dixon was a DRD appointment to the Belfast Harbour Commissioners

Mick Fealty on July 14, 2010, 1:21 pm

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Here’s another little snippet that further highlights the Permanent Secretary’s lack of candour with Stormont’s PAC. When asked by Patsy McGlone about the apparent conflict of interest in pulling Peter Dixon into the Independent Review Team when both the Phoenix Gas CEO and Mr MacKenzie were such close colleagues, Paul Priestly gave this answer: I have known Peter Dixon as a business contact for a couple of years. This is a very small place, so it is inevitable that people …

NI Water: “No, I do not believe that there was a conflict of interest.”

Mick Fealty on July 12, 2010, 9:00 am

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Slugger understands that there is growing unease amongst members of Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee with Peter Dixon’s unprecedented attack on the Committee’s line of inquiry, and the apparent silence on the matter from their own chair, Paul Maskey. This passage from Hansard is illustrative of the line which drew fire from the Phoenix Gas CEO: Ms Purvis: On the back of that, Chairperson, I raised the point with the regulator last week that Peter Dixon was to head up the independent review team. …