Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Perhaps if the Minister is not in a position to provide the information today, he will send the information on to us regarding the level of expertise the particular staff in NewERA have on estimating value of companies where privatisation the selling off of strategic State assets is planned. The Minister says the sale of Aer Lingus is not the sale of a strategic asset nor is the sale of forestry, but some people would disagree. Who in the NTMA who was involved in the decision process had experience - perhaps from another country - of making these decisions or was it that it was just a group of public servants, which those in the NTMA are, coming up with a figure and presenting that figure to the Minister? There appears to be no independent verification of any of the figures by anybody outside of officials employed by the Government. That is not a sufficient basis on which to proceed and I would like to see some verification or benchmark as to whether this is a realistic figure.

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