Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, said about an hour ago that we have to sell these assets as it was one of the conditions that came with the IMF money. This must be the most successful and costly con job in the history of the world. We, the Irish people bail out European financial institutions. The Europeans lend us the money to do it and in return we give them full control of our country. It is absolute madness.

In the short time I have, I will address the ideological debate whether State organisations such as the ESB should be run or owned by the public sector or the private sector. On the left we have this sense that the private sector in somehow inherently bad and any private sector investment will cause cataclysmic failure across our country. The position of the right is that only the private sector can bring real efficiency, the public sector is inherently inefficient and wasteful and therefore should not be let run these businesses. There is evidence for both positions. We see clearly from the sale of Eircom that the private sector, unregulated and left to its own devices will strip assets and under invest in strategic infrastructure in the country. Let us look at the ESB which is publicly owned. The ESB provides us with some of the most expensive electricity in the country and in doing so takes that money and pays its workers some of the highest utility wages in the world. Members make the point that the ESB needs to be protected because it is profitable. It is profitable because it charges the people so much money. I would like us to move beyond this debate and consider what we are looking for from State assets. We are looking for value for money, high quality services and good jobs. Both the private sector and the public sector are capable of doing this. The debate on strategic and non-strategic assets is incorrect in my opinion. Our farms are pretty strategic, they are successfully privately run; our mobile telephone network is strategic and is successfully privately run. The ESB is strategic and in my opinion is not successfully run because it charges people too much for what it provides. We need to move beyond this. I would like to make three suggestions to the Government.

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