Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

How could anybody propose to vote for such a wishy-washy, vague piece of paper? That is what is being done. The Minister is selling the shares and that is it. The Members of the Dáil are voting on waffle about Aer Lingus’ preference for a registered employment agreement. It can change a preference tomorrow. My favourite colour today is blue and tomorrow it might be red. It has a preference to utilise direct labour, wherever efficient. That is not a commitment, it is a preference. I thought collective agreements, registered employment agreements, were unconstitutional and had not been re-enacted. Maybe somebody could correct me on that. If they are going to come in, that is good but there is no commitment by Aer Lingus to do that.

There is no question but that the Labour Party gang of seven was a front for the Government, to give it cover. They were getting top coverage from all the top political journalists who get their feeds from the Government. It was a sham and a fraud on their constituents. They were opposing it but they knew some extra items would be gathered from the negotiations and then they could row in behind the Government saying they had gained a victory, that it was all because of them. Nobody believes that. People are very cynical and they do not believe that type of nonsense. No one in that group has shown him or herself to be principled, with the possible exception of Deputy McNamara, who has a strong constituency interest in the issue.

We have kept this share as a strategic commitment to the airline, to make sure it has a strategic commitment to us. The way this sale has happened seems to be in complete breach of what the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, talked about when he described the hands-off nature of the sale of State assets. When he was talking about the sale of the national lottery he talked about appointing certain officials in his Department who would work on it and no Minister would be involved, etc. We have found out, however, that in the past few months the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Donohoe, has been entertaining Willie Walsh and others from IAG in his office, on a private basis. Presumably, if we made freedom of information requests about these meetings they would be found to be commercially sensitive, although we certainly should attempt to get the minutes of all those meetings. Then there is a debate for a day and a half in the Dáil to rush this through. It brings us back to Siteserv and the sale of the mobile telephone licence. This is a common theme when Fine Gael is in government. If we decide to sell assets we should look for full market value and sell them in the interests of the State and we should not decide to flog something because someone comes along and says he or she would like to buy it. What if someone wanted to turn the Government offices into a hotel? That would be completely ludicrous but someone comes along to buy a 25% stake in an airline that he or she is so desperate to get and is entertained, there are official meetings and an agreement to do business, and there is great excitement that it is protecting the airline. Government backbenchers, with the exception of Deputy McNamara, are reading off the notes they have been given because they do not know what went on. They have no access to the information passed between the Minister, the Government and the executives of IAG.

The ironic point is that this deal is not through yet, which could make a laughing stock of Parliament because it has to get the competition consent at the European Commission. Virgin Atlantic has complained and expressed its concerns and presumably will object to this. If that complaint were to succeed and this deal were to fail, as the proposed Ryanair takeover of Aer Lingus failed, it would make a mockery of the Parliament. It also depends on Ryanair’s consent, which has not been announced. It will need to take all of the shares in the company. In their excitement Parliament and the Government are rushing in to get a few quid. As someone, Senator Barrett I think, told me yesterday, it is two hours’ public spending. For the length of this debate the amount of money generated by the Aer Lingus sale would be spent by the public service around the country. It is completely ludicrous, valueless and unacceptable. The process is wrong that the Government can negotiate behind closed doors and then tell the Dáil.