Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately the company was asset stripped which was a great pity. The company has now made a tremendous revival and is engaged on a very significant programme in the economy regarding the roll-out of fibre, an immensely valuable initiative.

Senator Mullen is fair to question whether we have learned anything from the past. I think that we have learned the merit of retaining networks in State ownership.

I shall comment on some of the other contributions. Senator Mac Conghail raised a number of questions that, as he said, were provoked by the ghost of Telecom Éireann. There is no point in my coming to the House and seeking to nuance what we are doing. We are doing what we are doing because we do not have any choice. I would like the Members of the House to tell me what they would sell. If they accept that there is a stricture on us to come up with a quantum, as a result of the disposal of State assets, I urge them to tell me what they would sell. To be honest, the State portfolio is much exaggerated. A great deal of what is left in State ownership does not amount to a hill of beans in the context of, as Senator Daly said, the scale of the debt. If we are obliged to make a contribution, where do we make it? It seems to me that this arrangement has a very good chance of producing a win-win for Ireland Incorporated.

I cannot imagine why a company would want to buy into the energy sector here and not seek to gain market share, run a profitable company and employ more people. Meanwhile, we have a very technically professional networks company that will, as a separate subsidiary, oversee and supervise the evolution of Irish Water which will employ a great many more people than in the energy business of Bord Gáis Éireann. In that sense, one is looking at something which is not damaging to the country's public interest and has the prospect of growth and development in the future. The more competition we have in the energy market, the better.

Senator Barrett raises a more difficult question about the remuneration of the gas pipeline. That is a more difficult question because it fundamentally questions the regulatory model we have. Everybody understands why we should have the interconnector. As a somewhat remote western island, we are at the end of the pipeline and security of supply must be my first consideration. We saw the pipeline turned off in the recent past, so we must have an interconnector. If we must have an interconnector, we must have some model to remunerate the investment which went into creating it and, therefore, we must ensure all players are treated equally.

Maybe, with the wisdom of hindsight, there are Members of the House who hold a point of view which says that in good times, the State should have paid for it and not engaged in the structuring done in terms of the remuneration of the pipeline and the arrangement with Bord Gáis. Maybe, with the benefit of hindsight, there is some validity in making that point but the fact is that we now have to remunerate it. Whether it is gas from the Corrib field coming ashore or LNG coming into Tarbert, we must ensure they are all treated equally.

Senator Barrett will have the opportunity to read a High Court judgment on this in the not too distant future and he may want to re-engage with me. We may have different views at that time because there is a challenge in the High Court and I expect that, within the next four to six weeks, we will have a decision and the court will rule. We will deal with that when it happens.

One of the things of which I am proud is that there is a new east-west interconnector between Ireland and Wales for electricity supply to this island, which is a very positive development. The whole thrust of European policy is towards integration. Integration initially will be a matter for this island, the neighbouring island and France. Again, the hope is that it would put downward pressure on prices and would guarantee security of supply in times of difficulty or interruptions for whatever reason. The interconnector is a very important limb of it.

I knew Senator Ó Clochartaigh before he became a Member of the House, and I regret he is not present in the Chamber. He is a particularly intelligent Member of the House for whom I have a lot of regard, but whoever wrote his script is living in cloud cuckoo land. He ranted on about neoliberalism and the fact this is being sold only for reasons of ideological motivation, but I am afraid that is not the case. I wish it were that it only had to do with ideology. Ideological motivation has nothing to do with this. It is the pragmatics of the only people in the world prepared to lend us money saying that if they are going to do so, we must comply with the following strictures and that if we do not, they will not sign the cheque. There is no other ideological motivation behind it.

There is nothing I can say to my colleagues in Sinn Féin, and I had this debate in the other House. When I set out the elements of the strategy on wind energy and policy statements, they just ignored them and continued to assert there is no policy. I have no idea what Senator Ó Clochartaigh means when he says Sinn Féin is in favour of wind energy along the lines of the Scottish model. I would like to hear what he means and maybe I can meet him half-way.

Capping the salaries of chief executives of State companies at €100,000 may be good populist politics but it is not part of the real world and is not something I can contemplate. The last thing we want in the running of State companies, which are crucial in a number of areas, is people who are not up to doing the job and of competing with the best.