Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important issue. We in Sinn Féin believe no commercial State or semi-State companies should be sold. We understand the importance of the ESB, Bord Gáis, Coillte, Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann, Dublin Bus, An Post and Aer Lingus to name a few. We understand how important they are in the everyday lives of people, how the services they provide keep this country moving and cater for the very unique social landscape in this State. We are committed to protecting these essential services and keeping them under public control.

That we are having this debate under the cloud of valuable State assets being sold off, yet again, is significant. Most people would ask why and why now. When we read the Government's amendment to the Sinn Féin motion we get some insight into the proposed narrative. We are expected to believe the sale of substantial State assets, to the value of somewhere between €2 billion and €5 billion, is to help provide public services and to restore the banking system. If that really is the motivation, it is a criminally misguided and short-sighted one.

Our experience of selling State assets for the so-called good of the people has been one littered with the promise of short-term gains and guaranteed long-term losses. This Government, like the previous Governments, as Oscar Wilde might have said, "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".

This sell-off is spun as a necessary consequence of the EU-IMF deal, of Fianna Fáil's disgraceful management of the economy, as a revenue-raising, competition-increasing measure, but people know different. They know because they have experience of Government sell-offs, incompetence and cosy deals. They remember the M50 tollbridge, Corrib gas and Telecom Éireann. Again and again a small number of private individuals profit at the expense of the public at large. In the Telecom Éireann or Eircom fiasco, for example, the initial change in ownership cost more than €240 million in today's prices. The transaction costs of the company's six changes of ownership probably cost around €1 billion. The Valentia consortium alone made almost €1 billion net out of its ownership, and at each turn a small number profited handsomely. The same cannot be said for the large proportion of the 600,000 people who bought shares on privatisation. They lost one-third of their money.

The privatisation of State assets has in the past, and will in the future, result in asset-stripping. The Eircom experience provides an example, with one owner going so far as to sell off its brand new headquarters and telecom masts to extract cash from the company. Eircom was worth €8.4 billion at the time of its privatisation in 1999 but by early 2011 it had a net value of just €39 million. At the same time, Ireland has been near the bottom of the league on broadband and telecommunications infrastructure, despite the fact that these are an essential component of modern life and business.

It comes as no surprise that our competitiveness, in terms of the smart economy, has been well below par for the past decade. All this while huge sums are being paid out in subsidies to private providers to try to bring our systems up to speed. This is not a case of public sector, good, private sector, bad. It is a case of recognising that we live on a small island off the west coast of Europe, with a population of around 6 million and that experience has taught us that if we want to guarantee services and essential infrastructure are delivered to its four corners, private companies, driven by profit margins, have no interest in the people who live in large swathes of this country, particularly those in rural or sparsely populated areas.

Had the ESB been in private ownership in the middle of the last century, many of us would still be in darkness. The lessons from the privatisation of Eircom must be taken on board by the Government. I urge all Members to support the Sinn Féin motion.

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