Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

I notice the millionaire-owned press this morning warmly embraces the Government decision to privatise the national airline. Why would it not do so given that some of its key players made a fortune in asset-stripping the previous major taxpayer-owned company the Government privatised, namely, Telecom Éireann? No doubt the directors of Greencore warmly applaud the decision to privatise Aer Lingus. After all, they made a fortune from another Fianna Fáil privatisation, never mind that they destroyed the beet and sugar industries and the jobs of hundreds of workers in the process. The millionaires who owned Irish Ferries will also warmly support the Government's privatisation plans and might even buy shares. They might also be in a position to advise the new owners on how one takes a trade union workforce with reasonable pay, jobs and conditions and turns it into a yellow pack operation of exploited migrant workers. The bankers, to whom the Taoiseach wants us to be nice, will also applaud the decision as they will get enormous consultancy fees. In other words, in the privatisation of Aer Lingus the Taoiseach is in the company of sharks and not the majority of the Irish people. The decision to privatise the company, if implemented, will be one of the most outstanding acts of economic treachery committed by any Government in the history of the State.

In previous times, attacks on Aer Lingus or its workers would draw loud protests from Fianna Fáil backbench Deputies from north Dublin, Clare, Limerick or Cork but now that the greatest act of betrayal is imminent we hear not a whimper of opposition. A collapsed rugby scrum would emit more intelligible grunts than we have heard from Fianna Fáil Deputies in protest at the privatisation of Aer Lingus. If the airline's workers from north Dublin had sent in cabbage heads from the local vegetable farms to decorate the benches behind the Taoiseach, they would get more decent representation in opposition to the privatisation plans than from those who represent them at present.

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