Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The only promise I made and I will make it again, is that there will be no fire sale. There will be due diligence. We will sell nothing that does not get value. If we do not get a fair price we will sell nothing. I have said that from the beginning. If the Deputies think that we should sell Aer Lingus at any price in any circumstances, under any conditions, they will be on their own. The same applies to Coillte. If, manifestly, the due diligence we have done said that the Government objective set out could be achieved then we would proceed with the sale of the harvesting rights of Coillte but I have said that our due diligence showed something else. That underscores our consistency, the correctness of our view that we will proceed with an asset sale only if it makes economic and strategic sense for the Irish people and for our economy at this time.

In answer to the points about the various stimulus programmes, of the stimulus plan that I announced last year, €850 million will come from the proceeds of the sale of State assets. That is a modest sum in the context of what will be realised from assets that are for sale now. I will not breach confidentiality, mainly because I do not know and have asked not to be told what the bids are, but I know that there are robust bids for the assets that are for sale. I have kept completely separate from the bidding process and the structure. There is an absolutely sealed process for those interested in buying State assets that will have no contact with any member of the Government or any of our political advisers on these matters. That is as it should be and I wish that was always the way.

We are confident that we will realise very significant funding from the sale of State assets and that will become available to us this year. Maybe I should explain how that will be dealt with for general Government debt purposes, GGDP, and general Government balance purposes, GGBP. Deputy Donnelly has asked about this in the past. The licensing arrangement following the sale of the national lottery will come onto our books as soon as the payment is made, while the others will come as a credit to the ESB when it is sold and to BGE when it is sold and will be brought back onto the State accounts by way of a dividend payment when the Government determines. We can time that to the best benefit of the Exchequer and when we need the money. There are 14 staff in NewERA, the National Development Finance Agency will be subsumed into the National Treasury Management Agency and other staff into the merged National Roads Authority and Rail Procurement Agency, which is will be a new procurement agency for the State. That is one of the mergers that we announced in 2011.

The final question was about water and the Deputy was being particularly mischievous there. He knows full well that there is a clear Government commitment that Irish Water will be a wholly State-owned company, that it will not be for sale, is not for sale and we will not countenance its sale.