Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important debate on the future direction of our State assets. I have considerable respect for the Minister's honesty. I urge him to ask his Labour Party ministerial colleagues to desist from pinning his agenda of selling State assets on Fianna Fáil. The facts speak for themselves. The Minister for Finance admitted on many occasions in response to Deputy Michael McGrath on Question Time that this was not a route decided on by Fianna Fáil in Government. We did what any Government should do, namely, take stock of the State's assets. There is nothing wrong with that. The Government should stop misinforming the public on the facts and the chronological order in which they occurred. There is a trend in this country that if one says something twice on RTE it becomes fact. It ill behoves any Minister to mislead the Irish public.

The debate over ownership of State assets cannot be simplified into left and right positions. We will have to take a pragmatic view of what is right for the country in social and financial terms. The Government is right to take its time in considering these issues but if it decides to sell it should do so at the optimum time. Prior to selling semi-State companies, however, it needs to look after the employees who built them up and have become major stakeholders in them. When we speak about privatisation, we cannot avoid the subject of job losses. Significant issues arise in respect of jobs and livelihoods for the employees, their families and the communities in which they live. In his contribution the Minister made no mention of the pension funds associated with some of these State companies. We know there are large deficits in many of these pension funds, which needs to be considered thoroughly.

Before we go any further down the road of developing a policy on the disposal of our State assets we need to introduce other legislation that comes under the remit of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, which is to establish a register of lobbyists. That is critical legislation in bringing the transparency we need. My party has published legislation in that regard and I know the Minister is working on it. I believe it would be agreed by all parties in this House. We all know the high-profile Ministers who were household names now engaged in the business of lobbying and there is nothing wrong with that. However, equally there is a coterie of people, including former civil servants who are not household names, who are attempting to influence public policy. They have ready access to top-level civil servants and to Government. It is only fair that the public should know who these people are.

We also need a serious debate on what State assets are strategic and what are non-strategic. In that regard, why is the remaining shareholding in Aer Lingus now being viewed as a non-strategic State asset? In my part of the country - the mid-west - we regard the potential loss of the Heathrow landing slots as critical.

See this speech in context