Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for amending the Order of Business. However, I wish to put on the record of the House that we are debating without any Minister or Minister of State in attendance.

The Leader and other Members will be aware that I live and I have grown up beside Dublin Airport. I have spent my whole life there and I know families, friends, members of my own family and work colleagues who work there. Whole families have been employed at Dublin Airport and in Aer Lingus. It is a very important company for this country and from a selfish Dublin and north Dublin perspective. I know the airport and Aer Lingus very well. I have grown up with the airline.

It is a fact that Dáil Members will be making a decision this evening. My constituency colleague, Deputy Alan Farrell, admitted that he had not read any of the reports before he spoke in the other House. With the exception of Deputy Michael McNamara, they are making their decision on trust, without doing any research. The State will get about €340 million out of this deal. As I said on the Order of Business, this has been choreographed for the past two to three years. The Fine Gael Party, the Labour Party, the Tánaiste, Deputy Joan Burton, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and the Taoiseach all know this. That is why they butchered the pension scheme. That is why the Fine Gael and Labour parties enabled legislation for the first time in the history of the State to allow a company's private pension scheme to be changed by legislation to reduce people's pension benefits by up to 60%, to take six weeks' money from retired people in their 70s, 80s and 90s, so that there would not be a deficit in the pension scheme when they flogged off the State's interest. Those are the facts. That is what the people think and what the people know. The Fine Gael Party has done it and the Labour Party has facilitated it.

It does not surprise me with regard to the Fine Gael Party because the selling of State assets has always been its strategy; it would sell them all if it could and that is why NewERA was set up.