Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

My apologies. I thought the request had to be made. I did not know it was automatic.

A major part of the problem with the Government's proposal is its claim that the proceeds of any sale cannot be used for investment purposes. There is no doubt Ireland is hugely lacking in terms of investment in our public services. The expected proceeds of the sale amount to a mere 1% of our debt. It seems like a very small amount but think about what could be done with those proceeds in terms of making up the deficit that exists. The Social Democrats very much believe that, at a minimum, we should be seriously challenging those rules.

Even if there is no possibility of the proceeds of sale being invested, the Government's plan still makes very little economic sense. AIB is about to pay a dividend of €250 million to shareholders. Given the fact that the State practically owns the entire bank, it is a huge amount of money that could be put to very good use. Why would we pass up on an opportunity to continue to receive those substantial dividends yearly. We could spend those, although under the rules, we could not spend any proceeds. The Social Democrats has called for a cost-benefit analysis to be carried out to look at the pros and cons of a decision to sell 25% at this point because we simply do not know whether that makes sense.

We have not been given any of the material but the Government certainly does not lack advice. There is a serious problem with the fact the Government seems to be employing so many different financial consultants in regard to this matter with the fee pool reported to be somewhere in the region of €40 million. We know the Government has engaged more than a dozen companies to advise it, including all the usual suspects and names which were involved in and turned out to benefit very much from the bank bailout. Here we are again with, it would seem, the similar kind of gravy train. The most recent tranche of appointments included Goldman Sachs, for example. Last month this firm purchased 1,200 buy-to-let mortgages in a portfolio with a face value of €400 million from AIB. How can there not be a serious conflict of interest when insiders, made up of people who stand to benefit substantially from the proposed sale, are advising the Government?

In the time that I have available to me, I urge Members to support the Social Democrats' amendment to at least insist that we have a Dáil vote before any decision is taken on this important matter.

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