NO COMMENT
HE’S the public utility boss who publicly announced his plans to donate almost €1m to the homeless from selling shares he holds in the company that profits from Irish Water meters.
But this weekend Michael McNicholas – the chief executive officer of Irish Water’s parent company Ervia – was more coy about what happened to a sixfigure windfall he previously made from shares in NTR.
Until last Sunday Mr McNicholas, an ex-CEO of the company, was an adviser to NTR, which makes €2m each year from meter installation and waste water contracts with Irish Water.
Mr McNicholas also declined to be drawn this week on whether he had been in communication with the Government about his shareholding and his role as adviser to NTR, ahead of his decision to quit that position and dispose of the shares.
Before taking up his position as CEO of Ervia last year he was the boss at NTR, which has a 50% stake in a subsidiary called Celtic Anglian Water. Celtic Anglian has contracts worth €2m a year with Irish Water.
The Irish Mail on Sunday revealed last week how the Ervia boss currently owns 440,707 shares worth an estimated €969,555.40 in his former employer’s company.
And the MoS also detailed how he had previously sold an additional 352,970 shares worth an estimated €324,732 six months after being appointed CEO of Eriva – which at that time was known as Bord Gáis.
Asked last week, Irish Water refused to say whether Mr McNicholas held the shares in NTR. NTR also declined to answer questions.
It was not until the MoS visited Mr McNicholas’s home that a spokesman for Ervia contacted this newspaper to confirm that the CEO still had shares in his former employer’s company.
Then, 24 hours after our report on Mr McNicholas’s shareholding, he broke his silence and went on RTÉ’s current affairs radio programme Morning Ire-
‘Proceeds are donating to Focus Ireland’
land to make his first public comment about the affair.
He told RTÉ: ‘I do hold shares in NTR and they are restricted but I am divesting myself of those shares. I am looking to see if I can accelerate the lifting of these restrictions to divest myself of those shares.
‘Proceeds that come from the sale of those shares, myself and my wife, as we always have intended, are donating to Focus Ireland, which has always been our intention,’ he told the nation.
This newspaper asked a series of follow-up questions on foot of his appearance on Morning Ireland on Wednesday of this week.
We asked, as Mr McNicholas had indicated he intented to donate the proceeds of his shareholding, if he had done the same when he disposed of the initial tranche of his shares in November 2013.
We also asked him if he gave the money to charity, which charity he had donated to and whether he had sought a tax benefit from donating the proceeds of this initial sale.
As well as questions about his shareholding, we asked him if he had been in contact with the line minister in charge of Irish Water, Environment’s Alan Kelly, or Taoiseach Enda Kenny subsequent to the MoS’s queries about his shareholding.
We were assured by the Dublin PR firm representing Ervia’s Irish Water account that the questions would be answered without any further requirement to visit Mr McNicholas’s home.
After waiting for a reply for more than two days, a further request was made to Mr McNicholas’s PR representative asking when the response would issue.
Instead, former Irish Times journalist Mark Brennock, who now works on the Irish Water account for Murray Consultants, responded: ‘I am afraid there is no comment on any of that.’
Irish Water has previously declined to disclose how much money it has spent on PR consultants since the company was set up last year. However, the company has admitted that the costs are not included in the €86m consultancy spend that CEO John Tierney admitted to earlier this year.
The MoS recently revealed that the super-quango continues to spend nearly
What the CEO of Irish Water’s parent company Ervia, said when asked about his claim that he will donate the proceeds of selling his shares in a f irm earning millions from water metering to charity
€1m every month employing ‘advisers’.
However the company failed under a Freedom of Information request to provide details of its spend on media advisers, saying that its parent company, Ervia was picking up the cost.
Until the beginning of November, Irish Water was handled by PR firm Fleishman Hillard, where long-time Fine Gael party activist Mark Mortell is a senior partner. However, following a competitive pitch by five agencies, the account
‘There’s no comment on any of that’
for the beleaguered company was last week awarded to Murray Consultants, who will work under the umbrella of Ervia. Ervia has refused to disclose how much the account is worth but industry insiders say it could be as much as €546,000 per year.
Contacted to see if there was any communication between Mr McNicholas and the Government on foot of last week’s MoS story, both a government spokesman and an environment spokesman did not comment yesterday.