Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

It is not an objective analysis. The principle is that this country is in a bad state. Thousands of our fellow citizens are out of work. There is no money available to the Government to stimulate the economy in the traditional new deal type of roll-out. As a result we are trying to find new ways of doing things. NewERA is a new way of doing things. In simple terms, if we can get €1 billion from the disposal of assets or take €1 billion from the pension fund, if there are willing private sector participants that €1 billion should be able to leverage approximately ten times that amount. It would be normal to leverage by a multiple of ten. Therefore we would get economic work to the value of €10 billion if we could raise €1 billion. That is it. We are not getting into the ideology of it; we are simply trying to get people back to work.

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