Semi-states: 'Ministers shouldn't interfere'
Monday, 14 December 2009 14:53
The Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey, has said semi-state companies are commercial operations and ministers should not get involved in their day-to-day running.
He was speaking in response to reports that the cabinet is to examine the pay bill in such companies.
Mr Dempsey said he would encourage commercial semi-state bodies to keep costs to customers down as much as they possibly can and act in a commercial way.
But, speaking at the North-South Ministerial Council meeting in Limavady, Noel Dempsey said each of the companies concerned had boards, and he did not think that Ministers should be interfering directly into industrial relations matters or pay matters within the commercial semi-state sector.
Mr Dempsey said the issue of cutting pay in commercial semi-state bodies was not formally on the agenda of tomorrow's cabinet meeting.
He said all such commercial semi-states had to be allowed act as commercially and in accordance with their own circumstances. But he said everybody should examine what was going on in relation to pay rates, and government policy was to see costs, including labour costs, kept low, particularly where costs were being passed onto customers.
