NI Water – Page 5 – Slugger O'Toole

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 …

Minister on “solo run with enormous financial implications” without Executive approval

Pete Baker on September 13, 2010, 10:49 pm

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What to make of the Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy’s, apparent declaration of intent over NI Water? Some would argue that the stated objective, of ‘re-nationalisation’ [within Northern Ireland] of the Water Service NI Water, was the main reason behind the ongoing saga. From the BBC report Finance Minister Sammy Wilson criticised Mr Murphy’s proposals as “expensive and unrealistic”. “Bringing Northern Ireland Water back, and he has admitted this himself, into full public ownership would have revenue consequences, making …

NI Water: Why did MacKenzie break up NIW’s commercial review team?

Mick Fealty on September 10, 2010, 1:26 pm

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With the inclusion of a submission to the PAC from Contracting Out, the NI Audit Office team will almost certainly spotlight NI Water’s customer service and IT contract with Steria Ltd. Not least since this is the only part of the initial controversy that substantially touches on the value for money issue. For all the accusations flowing in the direction of the sacked NEDs, it is important to note that Mr MacKenzie was given a detailed briefing on his arrival in …

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 …

NI Water: Now that £28 million reduces to £550k…

Mick Fealty on September 6, 2010, 11:27 am

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There are a number of issues worth picking up in the wake of the Minister’s performance at the Regional Development Committee. First, that figure of £28 million we’ve talked about before. We are greatly aided here by the fact that the contract audit upon which the IRT based it’s own report has now been put into the public domain by Nevin at the NALIL blog. The bad news for the so-called independent IRT is that a depth analysis utterly scuppers their view …

NI Water: Why open government is more than a slogan for the chattering classes

Mick Fealty on September 3, 2010, 4:42 pm

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There’s a very sharply observed piece by Denis Bradley in today’s Irish News, which aside from lauding the work of John Dallat and others on the PAC, an intelligent whistle-blower and some fine words about Slugger, he also let’s slip a few fundamental truths about where the blame lies. And it is not with the politicians: “…it has caught the two governing parties on the hop. They didn’t see it coming. But anyone who has spent a few nights in the …

TORs under which Priestly is to be investigated

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2010, 10:57 am

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I have no comment to make, other than to note the very narrowness of the Terms of Reference and quote the glorious Yes Minister, wh0se insights pepper this whole story from start to finish: “We dare not allow politicians to establish the principle that senior civil servants can be removed for incompetence. We could lose dozens of our chaps. Hundreds maybe. Even thousands.” TERMS OF REFERENCE Following allegations of irregularities around the awarding of procurement contracts in Northern Ireland Water …

NI Water: Minister failed to pick up Board’s early questions about Dixon?

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2010, 9:47 am

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Okay, another bullish performance from Minister Murphy here on the UTV report, though it is rare to see such a normally competent performer stuck for words in front of a camera. What’s complicated things for him was the robust nature of the questioning from Conall McDevitt, on the amount of work the Minister did to come to his conclusion that the Independent Review Team was indeed independent. He reasonably asserts that he cannot be across all the correspondence coming in …

NI Water: “Recent revelations left us questioning whether we had been misled”

Mick Fealty on September 1, 2010, 11:22 pm

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That quotation is from a rather more bullish statement from the NI Consumer Council CEO Antoinette McKeown than we have been accustomed to hearing as of late. The whole statement is posted below (courtesy of Nevin who chased them up on this), but several other things stand out. They pick out the Stakeholder Unit for special attention. This was the lynchpin for the relationship between the Department and NI Water, but given the immense degree to which people at Board …

Former Welsh Permanent Secretary to investigate suspended NI Permanent Secretary

Pete Baker on September 1, 2010, 11:33 am

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Former Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Assembly Government, Sir Jon Shortridge, is to lead the investigation into suspended NI Permanent Secretary, Paul Priestly, and his role in the NI Water saga. An iol report notes the terms of reference for the investigation Mr Robinson outlined Mr Shortridge’s terms of reference: “The report will include your comment on whether you believe there may have been any misconduct, including breaches of relevant standards of conduct, terms and conditions of appointment, and in Mr …

NI Water: “How did PwC get it so wrong?”

Mick Fealty on August 31, 2010, 3:36 pm

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On Friday, Diana Rusk had an interesting take on the NI Water issue. She highlights a memo from last April in which the Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson, responds to a request for an explanation for why Price-Waterhouse Coopers awarded Northern Ireland Water exemplar status on its procurement practice, when the same organisation has just sacked its Board for the same issue. The questions sharpen somewhat when you take into account that PwC have a number of those £28 million worth …

“non-executive directors of the interim board of NI Water met today informally with our CEO”

Pete Baker on August 27, 2010, 5:50 pm

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The BBC report tells us that The board of the government owned Northern Ireland Water company has given its full support to the firm’s chief executive, Laurence McKenzie. But, before making that statement of support, this is how Padraic White, the recently appointed interim Chairman of the interim Board of NI Water described today’s meeting “The non-executive directors of the interim board of NI Water met today informally with our CEO to be brought up to speed with NI Water affairs in advance of …

McKenzie tells watchdog he resigned “to get their attention”

Mick Fealty on August 27, 2010, 10:03 am

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A number of people have been asking where the watchdog Consumer Council has been during the whole debacle over the period of upheaval at Board level in NI Water… Sam McBride has an interesting series of emails in which their chief executive expresses her own personal support for Laurence McKenzie… Some of it throws a rather different light on McKenzie’s motivation for resigning: …on the morning of January 22, 2010, two days after Mr MacKenzie withdrew his resignation as NI …

NI Water: Systemic failure yes, but whose?

Mick Fealty on August 26, 2010, 4:40 pm

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The NI Water problem has remained stubbornly unnamed and unnameable. Watergate would be the most obvious ‘gate’ choice, but that’s already taken. We know that the Permanent Secretary, the first in the history of the state of Northern Ireland, has been suspended (see also Eamonn’s blow by blow) for vicariously attacking the Public Accounts Committee (through the offices of Phoenix Gas), over its questioning of the IRT and then deleting the evidence that he had done so. So first thing which has …

When the facts change, I’ll stick with my beliefs

Mick Fealty on August 26, 2010, 1:47 pm

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Nice piece from the Boston Globe (via Gavin on Google Reader), which may or may not have a relevance to the ongoing saga at Northern Ireland Water (which has ruined many people’s attempts to take a holiday, including my own)… In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist …

Did McKenzie mislead the Public Accounts Committee?

Mick Fealty on August 25, 2010, 1:28 pm

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UTV last night revealed that Laurence McKenzie (ie, not the sacked Board) had similar procurement problems at NIE: London consultants PKF were asked by the Utility Regulator to investigate the failings. PKF examined just 12 projects commissioned by NIE over a three-year period ending last January. Further they note (PKF Report) that under MacKenzie “Competitive tendering is the exception rather than the norm” in inside NIE. And yet in a direct answer to Dawn Purvis at the last meeting of …

NI Water: As brought to you by Slugger O’Toole and others…

Mick Fealty on August 24, 2010, 10:50 am

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I’ve been away for a few days and this story has been rolling on without me taking such a close interest in it. It has been an extraordinary few months. For me it began with a tip off on Friday 2nd July that I should get a hold of footage of the PAC meeting from the previous day. Thanks to prompt service from the Beeb the democracy live footage was available that evening. I sat down to watch it after …

“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: The current state of play…

Mick Fealty on August 21, 2010, 12:51 pm

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The position of the sacked NEDs, in my view, is utterly beyond dispute. They were turned over for not responding a report they were not permitted to see by the Priestly/McKenzie crew. Game over. This is not party politics. It is government. And unlike street politics, the means matters. In this case, the bare facts are compounded by the corruption of the oversight process. The extent of which will become painfully obvious over the next few days. In short, lots …