Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have to say that Deputy Buttimer deserves ten out of ten for brass neck and loyalty to the party line when it comes to trying to put a positive spin on what is, frankly, a scandal and part of the looting of public resources. There is no other word for it. The Deputy said that most of Bord Gáis is going to stay in public ownership, but this Bill is about putting public resources into private hands and starting a process of picking apart Bord Gáis. The Government is trying to claim that it has saved part of Bord Gáis but this Bill is about selling a very profitable part of that company and beginning the process of the inevitable full-scale privatisation of Bord Gáis. An elementary point will bear that out. If we sell off the profitable parts of Bord Gáis, the pressure will become all the greater to ultimately privatise the less-profitable parts. That is basic arithmetic.

Bord Gáis Energy produced €79 million in profits last year, as has been said and has, year on year, given tens of millions in dividends directly to the State. How anyone could possibly construe that it is good for us to give away a profitable asset when the country is beggared and when that asset is actually putting money, year on year, into the Government's coffers, is beyond belief. Not only that, if the profitable part is gone, the subsidy that those profits would provide to the other parts of the company to maintain the infrastructure that will be retained in State ownership will also be gone. It will be more costly for the State to maintain the network infrastructure and eventually the pressure will come to privatise that as well. That is always the way it works. One begins by privatising the profitable part and then one ends up having to privatise the rest. That has been the experience everywhere in the world. There is no counter example. Once privatisation starts, it is a slippery slope and the process continues.

Of course, there are other parts of Bord Gáis that are being privatised by stealth in what is an unbelievable sleight of hand and, frankly, a heist being facilitated by this Government. The recent awarding of the contract to install water meters to Sierra, owned by Mr. Denis O'Brien is a scandal. That company had €110 million of debt written down by Anglo Irish Bank, that is, by us. People who are in mortgage distress cannot get a write down on their debt but one of the richest men in the country can get €110 million written off by Anglo Irish Bank which was headed up at the time by Mr. Alan Dukes, former leader of Fine Gael. Now, lo and behold, he gets the contract for installing water meters, out of which he will make a pretty penny. It is a startling repeat of what happened with the selling off of the second mobile phone licence. It is just a scandal. We are being robbed and the Government is facilitating this robbery.

Who will suffer? Consumers will definitely suffer. As the company has been geared up for privatisation, we have had year on year price increases and the latest one will add €20 a year to the average household bill. How is that going to be a stimulus for the economy, when householders who already cannot pay their bills have another €20 added to their annual gas bill? Will that not be depressing for the economy? Of course it will. What damage will be done to small and medium enterprises which are clinging on for dear life, as prices are jacked up by private companies who have a captive market handed to them, courtesy of this Government? It is an absolute scandal.

I wish to illustrate how this connects with the so-called "good news" figures from the CSO suggesting that Ireland is coming out of recession. What a load of nonsense. I have just attended a briefing by the CSO and if one looks carefully at what is happening one sees that the domestic economy is continuing to flat line, investment is down and GNP is down. The one area that is growing is the multinational sector. At the same time that this sector is growing there is a massive increase in the outflow of profits from multinationals, which are hardly being taxed at all. We are being sucked dry by these multinationals as the domestic economy goes down the toilet. Not happy to just facilitate the multinationals in the areas of financial services, pharmaceuticals and IT, the Government is now proposing, with this Bill, to give them our natural resources which could be used for the benefit of the people and to generate desperately needed employment. The Government is going to hand over those resources to the same multinationals to suck out the profits from them. One could not make it up. It is a scandal.

What will happen to the workers? The same thing that has happened in all of those places which have been privatised - they will lose their jobs and their pay and conditions will be attacked. How will that help the domestic economy? It will not; it will do the same damage it has done in every other case where there has been privatisation. It is an absolute, unmitigated scandal.

It is a pity that there is not the same public sense of urgency and attachment to our gas resources as there was to our forests, which we did stop the Government from selling because we were able to mobilise widespread public opposition to it. Sadly, this is going under the radar for most of the public and they do not understand what is at stake. I certainly hope that the workers in Bord Gáis will fight this with every fibre of their being because their jobs and livelihoods are at stake, not to mention a vital natural resource.

It is not just gas that is being sold off, it is even worse than that. Bord Gáis Energy has massive wind portfolio assets. Years ago I used to joke at public meetings that if the corporate vultures had their way, eventually they would make us pay for fresh air but that is what will happen. Wind, or air, is a massive resource in this country which could be used to develop energy and to create thousands of jobs. The Bord Gáis wind assets are now going to be handed over to private interests so that they can profit from our resources rather than us. Again, it is an absolute scandal. It is a heist and a robbery which should be opposed and resisted.

The Government asks what the alternative is but the alternative is very simple, namely, to keep a profitable asset in State hands and invest in the development and expansion of that asset. We must invest in wind energy, in our gas resources and so forth. We should used the profits generated to invest in the real economy to create jobs. How the Government Deputies cannot see that is beyond me or maybe they do see it and they know what they are doing, namely, facilitating their mates in the private sector. In that context, I must say a final word about the Labour Party. I sort of expect this from Fine Gael because of its ideological commitment to privatisation but for Labour Deputies to stand up here and defend the privatisation of State resources is absolutely shocking. It is particularly shocking that the senior Minister in the Department that is doing this is someone who wrote pamphlets in the 1970s, as part of a resources protection campaign, warning against the privatisation of our resources. He actually led popular campaigns and protests against the sell-off of our natural resources and now that same Minister is facilitating the asset stripping of a vital resource when we need it most. How the worm turns. It is revolting.

See this speech in context