Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Earlier, the Minister was complaining that the National Pensions Reserve Fund was not being taken into the calculations of our overall liabilities by the bond markets. Yesterday, the Minister appointed Professor John FitzGerald of the ESRI to the new Central Bank commission. In an article by Eamon Quinn in The Sunday Tribune on 19 September 2010 he was quoted as saying, "Announcing the sale of the unencumbered €14 billion worth of stock market investments inside the National Pensions Reserve Fund will be a key card for the government to play." Ciarán O'Hagan of Societé Generale in Paris, a well known commentator on Irish Government bonds, said selling the pension fund would "be a very good surprise" for the bond markets, even though the Government had enough cash to see out the market crisis. Given that yesterday the Minister announced the appointment of Professor Fitzgerald to the Central Bank Commission, he must have been aware, and no doubt his officials briefed him, on this prominent statement by him on the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

The Labour Party put forward a proposal to use €2 billion for a strategic investment bank to kick-start and continue capital and other critical investment. Has the Minister had a chance to examine that?

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