Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Will the Minister confirm it is not legally possible for the EU-IMF-ECB troika to come back for more once the terms of the EU-IMF agreement are adhered to? Will he clarify for the benefit of Sinn Féin that if the agreement were not in place, then there would be severe cuts on social welfare, education and health budgets? Will he confirm the EU-IMF has made it abundantly clear that as long as the bottom line of the agreement is adhered to, they will be flexible as to how the programme is implemented?

Does the Minister agree lessons must be learned from past sales of minority shares in State bodies? The minute a minority share of a State company is sold off, the company's interest shifts from the national to the shareholders' interest. Pressure then mounts inexorably to sell more of the company until it is fully privatised. For example, in the case of Irish Sugar, we were guaranteed only a minority share would be sold while a golden shareholding would be retained by the State. We know, however, what happened to that company in the end.

The measure of people is not that they do not make mistakes but that they learn from their mistakes. In hindsight, I have come to believe some of the privatisations of State companies in the past were wrong. I am willing to learn from this, but it seems the Labour Minister opposite is not.

See this speech in context