Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am not going to turn myself and my Department into a gambling operator. Steady on, please. This has to be done in a regulated and measured way. Having a professional operator who has competence operating within the regime is a much better way of doing it.

I am exploring every avenue to get capital to invest in the economy. Today we had very good talks with the president of the European Investment Bank, Mr. Werner Hoyer, and his team. It was the first time the full board of the bank had met outside Luxembourg. This year they will put €600 million into this country for school bundles, road and other projects. I am in talks with the Council of Europe Development Bank which is funding the project in Oberstown, a development I felt morally we had to pursue to take young boys out of the adult prison at Mountjoy. One has to desperately scramble around to find the wherewithal to undertake these imperative projects. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, recently showed me the demographics to indicate how we needed to build more schools for 10,000 children a year. We have approved three bundles under the PPP system, which are on top of the €2 billion allocated to the schools capital programme. We need to get the primary health care centres up and running to take the pressure off the acute hospital system.

Everywhere I look there are screams for capital. I am sure that if I came here with proposals to sell Coillte, we would have a robust debate. People would not be happy with the sale of the generating elements of Bord Gáis or the ESB's two foreign power stations. We need objectively to make rational decisions to meet the needs of the people and the economy. We are doing everything in a controlled and thoughtful way. Doing nothing is not an option. There is a comfort in the status quo and always an argument not to change it. Objectively, this legislation is a creative and imaginative way of getting an additional significant sum of money which will create short-term construction jobs and, much more importantly, in the long term have a legacy for the Oireachtas, namely, the national children's hospital which will be a flagship for the island of Ireland and a beacon for all of Europe, if we get it right.