Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

When former Deputy Desmond O'Malley predicted wrongly that Deputy Michael D. Higgins would go mad if in Government, it was bound to happen to one of his own. I said from this spot three years ago that it was a mistake to allow the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform close that last padded cell in Mountjoy because it might be required for himself. Yesterday's events go to show that.

In the past few weeks the Taoiseach has got many letters from Aer Lingus workers asking him to step away from privatisation of the company. Will he agree that as the financial experts of the Government say, privatisation would realise only approximately €400 million, the price of a mere four aeroplanes? The argument that this vital strategic public asset should be privatised does not stand up.

I ask the Taoiseach to reflect on a number of issues. The European Commission has clarified there is no barrier to the State investing in the national airline. The chairman of the National Development Finance Agency, Dr. Somers, told me at the Committee of Public Accounts that if the Government asked it, it would have full powers to source funding for equity into Aer Lingus and would have the expertise. We were also told that the National Pensions Reserve Fund, on the directions of the Government, invests billions of euro in private industries throughout the world including, shamefully, in the armaments industries and big tobacco "killer" industries yet it will not be asked to invest in the socially useful underpinning of the national airline.

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