Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If the Deputy had said when we came into government that only 15% of Bank of Ireland would be owned by the State by the end of 2011 people would have laughed at him. It has been an extraordinary success that we have managed to get away such a large percentage of Bank of Ireland and that that investment has come through for this State. It has been an extraordinary success that the amounts involved were considerably less in terms of the overall recapitalisation done in March 2011 than people thought.

The Deputy asked a question about forestry. I am glad to inform him that the National Pensions Reserve Fund, NPRF, made an investment in forestry during 2009 with a €20 million investment in an Irish forestry fund. It is the first forestry fund. The fund purchased about 5 million semi-mature trees from Coillte, which will remain in charge of the day-to-day management of it. That is an example of the fund investing in a natural resource. The Deputy would argue that we need to do more of that, and he may well be right, but it is an example of what the investment has done.

For this fund to work and to create the jobs the Deputy and all of us want to see put in place, the NPRF's investment in infrastructure counts against the deficit unless it is commercial and less than 50% of the investment. The criteria involved in using the NPRF funds require, first, that it is matching in terms of private sector investment but, second, it would be a breach of the European Union rules if we were to use this outside that area.