Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and will cut to the chase regarding representations that have been made by me and many others in the north west on the extension of the gas network into Sligo town and of which the Minister will be aware. I understand the response has not been favourable because it has been pointed out there must be a large manufacturing or commercial entity operating in Sligo to provide critical mass. This particular argument has been disputed by Sligo Chamber of Commerce, representing all the businesses in the Sligo area, and I concur with that view because the lack of availability of a sufficient energy resource will act as a disincentive to companies, and larger companies in particular, locating in the north west. As someone who comes from the west of Ireland, the Minister will be aware one is fighting an uphill battle anyway to attract inward investment into the north west or the west because of their geographical location, peripherality and some misconceptions that these are isolated parts of the country, which of course is completely untrue because of infrastructural developments over the past decade or decade and a half.

As the Minister himself pointed out in his opening remarks, our island status makes us acutely aware of the importance of a secure gas supply. Are there implications in the future for the commercial extraction of gas under the fracking process? If this happens on the Minister's watch, which apparently will be the case, he undoubtedly will be under enormous pressure to facilitate possible drilling in the Bundoran Basin in the north west, particularly were the Northern side to proceed with drilling, although the position on what will happen there remains uncertain. The Minister might have a view on this issue. For example, will the commercial company that will take over and be running the new gas landscape in Ireland have a role in that regard? Will it be given carte blanche to seek out exploratory potential in the Irish context? This naturally is an issue that is of particular concern.

Another aspect in which I am interested pertains to the Minister's statement, "Initially the troika was not disposed to allow us retain any proceeds from State asset disposals and it insisted that all the proceeds from any such disposals be used for debt reduction." He went on to state, "In return for increasing the level of ambition of our asset disposal programme to a target of €3 billion, the troika agreed that half of the proceeds from State asset disposals could be retained to fund additional employment projects of a commercial nature". Can the Minister point out what is the Government's view as to what are projects of a commercial nature? Is there any sort of plan B in this regard? My initial reaction would have been that all the money should have gone towards debt reduction as the entire purpose of the fiscal policy of the Government is to try to reduce the debt. The Minister is aware that as a result of the most recent budget and its recent predecessors, people are suffering. While I do not wish to go down the road of trying to open up the budget debate, it is because of the large debt overhang that many decisions on fiscal policy that are being taken by the present Administration are hurting people severely and will continue to so do in the coming years. Consequently, I would have thought the Government would have been tempted not to choose the option of arguing with the troika about the disposal of the assets but to seek to reduce the national debt. After all, €3 billion is a fair whack of money and to put it in context, that is what is being taken out of the economy this year.

While I am loth to go down the road of talking about the previous Government's activities, I recall that in 2006, a budget surplus in excess of €3 billion was recorded and the then Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, put more than €2 billion of that surplus into reducing the national debt. This sometimes is long forgotten but it was at a time when there was so much largesse around that another Minister for Finance might have decided to have spent the money, rather than reducing the national debt. It was in this context that I was curious to ascertain what informed the Government in this regard, particularly as it has not outlined or been specific about how it will spend the money on what it referred to as "additional employment projects of a commercial nature".