Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Under EUROSTAT rules, the amount of any dividends received from a State company, including proceeds from asset disposals, which can improve the general government balance, GGB, is limited by reference to the income of the relevant company in the previous year.  In order to comply with the fiscal rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, the scope for the Government to use such dividends for additional expenditure on a GGB neutral basis is limited to the amount by which the dividends paid actually improved the GGB. That sounds complicated but I think the Deputy understands the point. In order to take maximum advantage of the asset disposal proceeds, they cannot all be availed of at once but must be remitted to the Exchequer over a number of years.

The State assets disposal programme announced by the Government in February 2012 has resulted in the following receipts for the Exchequer to date. In 2014, €347 million in special dividends was in 2014, comprising €197 million from ESB and €150 million from Ervia, formerly BGE.  In Jan 2015, a further €203 million was received from ESB, representing the remainder of the €400 million that had been requested from ESB as its contribution to the State assets disposals programme. A further €100 million is expected to be received from Ervia in mid-2015. The balance of the approximately €1 billion total net receipts expected as a result of the BGE sale is expected to be received between now and 2017, as required by the Government and in a prudent manner that protects Ervia's investment grade credit rating.

It has been the Government's consistent position that funds released from asset disposals should be used, as far as possible, to support the economy and job creation, while also using some of the proceeds to reduce debt. Since the State asset disposal programme was agreed by the Government, I have made a number of announcements including allocations of additional funding for capital investment to be funded from proceeds of asset disposals. Details of these investment programmes are on my Department's website, and further details about individual projects and programmes are available from the relevant Ministers and their Departments.

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