Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

The Minister has rightly said there are no soft and easy options when selling off State assets. The soft and easy and runaway options were given to the banks. The reason we are discussing selling off State assets is because of the incompetence, greed and uselessness of the banks. The most important State asset after water - the Minister is right - is forestry. We cannot live without either in the sense that we need water but we breathe through the trees as most people in the public Gallery will know. We can live without heat as many people do and we can live without electric light as my grandmother did - I am only 37 so maybe my great-grandmother did it. While we can live without these two elements, we cannot survive without forests because it is through forests that we breathe. If we are to sell off our State assets, I suggest, as Senator Hayden did, that we must in parallel have some consensus about manufacturing. When I was in Taiwan recently Chairman Chang pointed out that we in Ireland spent a lot of time talking about the financial centre, painting it and putting curtains in it, but we forgot about manufacturing and making things. If we are to sell off our State assets we must have in parallel what the Minister calls a stimulus. However, what does everybody mean by stimulus? I am listening to this word and the manufacturing of jobs, but do we mean actual manufacturing? What programmes and procedures has the Government put in place for the use of the money we will get from selling off the heartbeat of our country?