DUBLIN CITY councillors who are members of the Dublin Port Company are set to resist pressure to challenge the position of the chairman of the Dublin Port Authority, Joe Burke.
The Fine Gael group on the council has tabled a motion for tonight's meeting instructing the council's nominees to the port company to call a special meeting of the company, to discuss the position of Mr Burke.
Mr Burke was last week the subject of a High Court order that he should be restricted as a company director under section 150 of the Companies Act. It is understood Mr Burke is appealing the ruling.
Legal sources have indicated that the restriction order would not legally inhibit Mr Burke from serving on the board of the port company as it had sufficient capital funding to meet the terms of the Companies Act.
However, the Fine Gael leader on the city council, Gerry Breen, said the order raised serious questions about Mr Burke's continued tenure as chairman of the port company. "It is not sustainable for Joe Burke to remain in this position and I am calling on the three councillors as directors to call for an immediate board meeting," Mr Breen said yesterday.
"They have been chosen to represent Dublin City Council on the Dublin Port Company and they must now assume their responsibility to the city, the city council and the port company."
The board members who sit as Dublin city councillors are former mayor Paddy Bourke, Kevin Humphreys of Labour and Tom Stafford of Fianna Fáil. Attempts to contact Mr Stafford yesterday were not successful.
However, Mr Humphreys and Mr Bourke said they were not prepared to accept a mandate from the city council on the issue. Mr Burke said company law required his actions as a director of the port company to be in the best interests of the company. He said in a recent council debate about the future of Dublin Bay he had been asked to leave the chamber as he was seen to have a vested interest.
In relation to Joe Burke's continued tenure as chairman of the port company, Mr Bourke said: "I don't see what this has to do with the council." He considered the move by Fine Gael and Mr Breen to mandate the three councillors to be "extremely cynical".
Mr Bourke questioned Mr Breen's agenda, saying Mr Breen was a member of Dublin Baywatch, which is opposing a Dublin Port Company plan to infill 52 acres of the bay. "He is involved in trying to ensure that Dublin Port doesn't develop and is moved elsewhere. Gerry Breen is certainly not going to mandate me and the council is not going to mandate me."
Mr Humphreys said: "The city council can't do that. Under company law we have to act in the best interests of the company - it is not in the power of the city council."
He said that neither would he be seeking to raise the position of the Port Company chairman on his own initiative at the next board meeting. "The chairman of Dublin Port Company is appointed by the Minister for the Marine, and if he is be removed, it is by the Minister for the Marine."
