Campaigning and Activism
Ross is well known for standing up for small shareholders and consumers. In 2000, he and Eamon Dunphy championed the case of small shareholders of Eircom after shares in the former state-owned company dropped by more than a third in value in just over a year Ross took the Board of Directors to task over the level of salaries, bonuses and fees being paid and denounced a plan whereby senior management were to get share options at a value below the flotation price. At a shareholders' meeting in May 2005, Ross notably took up the cause of highlighting the monopolistic practices of tolling agency NTR plc. Ross persisted in drawing attention to the issue, criticising the National Roads Authority in August 2008 for its inadequate and confusing management of the M50 barrier-free tolling system, and was reported in The Sunday Times of London as having declared that "The removal of the barrier should have been cause for celebration. Instead, we have higher tolls, an administrative mess and pending chaos". In the aftermath of the voters' rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in its first referendum in June 2008 in spite of support for the treaty by the major political parties, Ross highlighted the "disconnect" between the ruling caste of the nation's politicians and the democratic will of the public.
In January 2009 he took the Central Bank of Ireland and Ernst & Young to task for their failings leading up to the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, In his capacity as Senator, Ross pressed Allied Irish Bank executives on the bank's fraudulent offshore dealings involving subsidiaries and Caribbean front operations, charging that the only party to be disciplined in the affair was the whistleblower who brought it to light and forcing from the bank's CEO Eugene Sheehy the admission that the institution may have been in breach of the Companies Act. He authored an account of the Irish financial crisis later that year – The Bankers: How the banks brought Ireland to its knees. In October of that year Ross drew the ire of the public transport company CIÉ for publicising charges of widescale fraud and mismanagement within the semi-state organisation. He has criticised government inaction in voicing concerns about the Sellafield nuclear plant, and has called for stronger legal protection for whistleblowers in cases of fraud and corruption.
For his investigation into waste at the state training agency FÁS pursuant to the 2008 FÁS expenditure controversy, Ross was recognised by his peers as the 2009 Journalist of the Year. Ross is frequently featured as a source by international news media, and has been cited as "one of Ireland's foremost financial commentators" by the Associated Press.
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