Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----whereby it was allowed to cherry pick them. Essentially it meant that servicing the critical mass remaining of what the State had left to divvy out would not be cost-effective. There has also not been an adequate response to the advice of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Deputy Catherine Murphy has referred to the fact that some of this advice was blacked out, thus preventing access to public information, although we really know why the view of the Oireachtas committee was rejected, which seems to happen all the time with the Government. The majority view here no longer seems to matter. We have not received a proper answer to the question as to why the Government continued to proceed at a time when there was only one bidder left. Essentially, it was not a competitive process, with bidder being a venture capitalist organisation. We have not received adequate answers and are left with valuable State infrastructure in private hands.

Various speakers have referred to the Eircom debacle, from which we should surely have learned some lessons, and also from overspending in many other areas. I certainly want to refer to the overspend on the national children's hospital project, as a vital project in my constituency will obviously be affected by it, the 96-bed unit at University Hospital Limerick, the most overcrowded hospital in the country. It matter when there is an overspend because other projects suffer. That is just one example that we cannot afford to allow linger any longer. No adequate explanation has been offered as to why the Government continued to proceed down this road and why this vital piece of infrastructure will not remain in State hands. As Deputy Penrose said, we may well end up having to buy it back, but we surely cannot go down that road now. The Government has to consider the fact that we need this vital infrastructure in public ownership.

On ideology, the same is happening in housing provision. We have public land being given over to private companies. That clearly is Government policy when what we should have is the retention of public land in public ownership to build affordable and social housing, but that is not happening either. Ideology is clearly at work.

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