Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I am unsure what the question is but I will tell the Deputy what happened. The original memorandum of understanding signed by the previous Government in December 2010 contained the following commitment:

Building on the forthcoming report of the Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities...State authorities will consult with the Commission Services on the results of this assessment with a view to setting appropriate targets for the possible privatisation of state-owned assets.

When we met the troika, they demanded a quantum of €5 billion. This was the figure they discussed with us. We refused to accept any quantum because the programme agreed between the two parties in government stated that we would seek to raise from the sale of State assets a sum of up to €2 billion to re-invest in job creation in the next generation of State investments. The Deputy is correct; the troika did not engage with us in terms of what we should sell.

Bluntly, there is enough oversight of what we do already without inviting them to do more. We examined the McCarthy report independently and called on every line Department to give us advices on it and my Department studied these. The settled view of Government was to move away from what was agreed in the programme for Government, that is, to break up the ESB. That was what the Commission had been pushing for us to do for a long time. We are keen to keep the ESB as an integrated entity and instead sell a minority stakeholding.

The Deputy referred to a percentage. We have decided on no percentage yet. We were discussing a quantum of money and it is invidious to start discussing the value of any percentage until we test the market. I have no difficulty with the Deputy criticising me; I could get used to it. However, she should wait until we do something. The Deputy is inclined to criticise before the action. It was suggested that we were not going to get the minimum wage reversed but then we did so. Then it was suggested that we would not be able to reduce the interest rate but then we did so. Let us see the "when" before we discuss fire sales. There will be no fire sales. Our commitment is only to sell State assets when the market conditions are right, when we can get a decent return for the State and when we can get good value.

See this speech in context