Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

I wish to share my time with Deputy Mulherin. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the proposal to sell some of the assets that the State currently enjoys. It is just gone a year since the last election, and one of the serious mandates this Government was given at the time was to sort out the mess the country was in. One could boil it down to nothing less than fixing the intolerable problems faced by this country. It is not so much an ideological issue. Although that is how some members of the Opposition have portrayed it, that is not the case. The simple fact is that for every man, woman and child in this country, we are spending €12,192 and taking in €8,312 in income. That is not sustainable and never will be, and it must be dealt with. If we look at this in terms of a householder or the treasurer of a GAA club or any other societal organisation, we can see that a decision must be made on the sale of assets, whether we call it that or call it a car-boot sale. I am pleased that the Minister has taken a pragmatic approach on what should be the sale of non-strategic State assets.

I have listened with some amazement and no little humour to Members talking about the sale of Coillte. Coillte is not for sale and its lands are not for sale. The product of the land, as Deputy Lawlor quite rightly mentioned, is on the market, but it would be on the market anyway. Trees grow and mature and then they are felled and sold. It does not matter who owns them or what they do with them, the process cannot be stopped. People have talked about the curtailment of walking rights or access to Coillte lands. When works are being carried out by Coillte, such disruptions take place in any event, and anybody who lives adjacent to Coillte lands in rural Ireland is well familiar with the consultation process. To suggest that citizens will be refused access to those lands for all eternity is quite simply ludicrous and cannot be accepted. We have a solid system of waymarked trails and rights of way, and access to those lands is enshrined in our law and will continue to be supported.

I remember, in the past, we operated a small telephone exchange in a country office. Thirty years ago, access to a telephone was a major issue, and many Deputies remember that one of the biggest vote-getters was to promise a phone to a house within two years. The system was then under public ownership, and the country invested hugely in telephone services. The Department of Post and Telegraphs became Telecom Éireann, then Eircom, and then it was lost. That was a harsh lesson for the country and for those who had invested having been told they were investing in their future. This Government will learn from those mistakes.

The proposal for the sale of non-strategic State assets that is under examination shows exactly what should have happened when Eircom came on the market. If we do not continue with deregulation and the movement of assets, things will never move on. Today it is less likely to be a question of access to telephones than to broadband connections, and ultimately we will be talking about 100 Mbps broadband connections.

There may be an issue about access to other vital State infrastructure. If State assets are retained in the comfort zone of public ownership, things will never change. Therefore, decisions must be made. Even if we were not in the midst of the current economic crisis, we would need to continue to make decisions on what was strategically vital or beneficial to the country.

There are advantages to the proposal to allow €1 billion from the proceeds of the sale of these assets to be set aside for job creation initiatives. This must be welcomed. If we do not reduce the national debt by €2 billion on foot of the sale of State assets, the money will have to come from some other sector, be it health, education or social welfare. I have not heard of a proposal from any Member as to the Votes of Departments from which the required €2 billion will come. It is unacceptable for Deputies to speak about the ideology of the sale of State assets and then return to their comfort zone and say the Government should not cut funding in this or that Department. That is simply intolerable.

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