Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

I wonder what is the Minister's definition of success. If a successful IPO is managing to sell all the shares that are on offer, it is a limited definition of success. Success must be judged on whether the shares were sold at the right price. They were not sold at the right price.

Success must be judged on whether the Government maintained whatever leverage it had remaining, and it did not. Did the Minister have a veto on this 7% being sold within two days? If he is indicating he did not, I accept it.

If a 30-day period exists for holding on to such leverage in any IPO, why in this particular IPO were the shares sold within two days of the original IPO? I do not accept that is standard in any IPO process. There is something unusual about this particular process that these shares were off-loaded so quickly.

The Minister did not answer other questions I asked in my original question. The Government now seems to be dependent on third persons, and Aer Lingus pilots, to stop any likely takeover of Aer Lingus, but what about the possibility that the National Pension Reserve Fund is investigating whether it can invest in Aer Lingus? This, in itself, would be the ultimate irony, that funds of the State would be used to acquire what the State owned only a short few weeks ago.

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