Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Today, the Taoiseach stated he did not know how much the biggest infrastructural project to be undertaken in the State in a very long time, which the Government committed to deliver, will cost. It is €3 billion and rising but he is not actually sure how much it will cost. We do not know when the plan will be decided, how it will be delivered or by whom it will be delivered. It is an absolute mess. I wonder whether lessons are being learned by the Government in all of this when we take into account the children's hospital fiasco. The lesson that needs to be learned is this. Once upon a time in this State if we needed public transport - trains and buses to go to every single part of the country - we had a State company to deliver it. If we needed telecommunications, we had a State company that delivered telecommunications. If we needed electrification throughout the country, we had a State company that delivered electrification. If we needed a postal service to get post to every village, town and house, we had a State company to deliver it. What we have done is dismantle those State companies bit by bit and allowed vultures, domestic and international, to asset strip those companies to the point that we cannot deliver anything. We are then dependent on vultures coming in, putting us over a barrel and dictating to us how much it will cost. They do not want to do it. They drop out if they cannot make a profit so we are left with one bidder and then that one bidder, a US investment fund, has us over a barrel. We have to go to dinner with them to see what we can possibly negotiate to deliver a plan that is of critical State importance. It is pathetic. Could we get the ESB to do it, please?

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