Sean Barrett (Independent)

I agree. No one believes anymore in the model of the national airline owned by the State. Olympic Air might be the last one left. It is a purely commercial activity and we now have the biggest airline in Europe, Ryanair, with over 80 million passengers per year, which is two and a half times the size of British Airways, which has been privatised. The proposition in the Culleton review of industrial policy is that the State needs a dynamic portfolio of assets so that it can sell them and move to a more advantageous area of the economy without getting trapped.

I regret that we did not privatise the airports because we now have a company that is unsaleable and has debts of €800 million. Airports in the UK were successfully privatised and broken up by the Office of Fair Trading, which is presided over by the distinguished Irishmen, Mr. John Fingleton. It easier to make industries competitive if the State does not own them. It is hard to own a team in a match and also to be the referee and retain credibility. We should be more open to programmes like NewERA and the State should not be stuck with a portfolio of assets that it is compelled to hold onto forever. We should keep it moving.

I regret the banks joined the portfolio because one of the ways firms got into the State sector in the past was by going broke in the private sector, which is not a good method of portfolio choice. The State must allow companies to go broke rather than nationalise them. The advice we get is based on the experience of so many senior Irish executives in the IMF and our record of service in the organisation represents good international links.

There should be some procedures whereby the IMF can link directly with parliamentarians. A criticism of some IMF reports is that they reproduce what the Government of the day thinks about the economy. When that collapsed in 2008, it showed the importance of the IMF reporting to parliamentary committees and seeking a wider range of views. Many people did not see the crisis coming but it would have been more obvious if international bodies reporting on the Irish economy met a wider range of people rather than just taking the view from the Department of Finance that everything was fine. That system led to an unpleasant surprise. The strengthening of parliamentary democracy, which must be part of the lessons from what happened in Ireland in 2008, should involve procedures whereby the OECD and the IMF meet Members.

I support the legislation proposed and it is a good sign that it enjoys such wide support in the House. I wish the Minister of State well. He mentioned a deadline of November, which we have met more than handsomely.