Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I hope to have the opportunity to engage on Committee Stage. In respect of this new fund, it is important that we learn from some of the challenges we faced with previous funds and areas of investment of the State. The record of the State has been mixed. Section 6 refers to investment policy and the focus is very explicitly on commercial aspects and seeking the optimal total financial return. We need to consider investment now not solely in terms of the financial return, but also value for money in the wider sense which includes societal, environmental and other inputs. Unfortunately, the framing of the fund around commercial investment has been very narrowly interpreted.

I proposed legislation to reform the mandates of Coillte and Bord na Móna. We know the shareholder letters sent by Ministers to Coillte opened very explicitly with reference to commercial returns on a cash basis and payments of dividends to shareholders. The focus is on what is cash generative, which is a narrow interpretation of what is of value and benefit to the State. If we want investment, it needs to be long term. State investment is different from commercial and private investments because the State can take a long view and consider where the value is in a wider way. The value may be in money that will not have to be spent if we fail to take action on climate or deliver on areas such as social cohesion or just transition, in terms of the breadth of businesses across the State.

I am worried that the same approach seems to apply to the new fund. I sit on the finance committee, as the Minister of State did. We had lengthy and laborious hearings on divestment from the occupied territories and illegal settlements. There was a painstaking approach taken to try to unpack how the NTMA might divest from those situations. While I recognise that there are provisions in respect of fossil fuels in the fund, they are all downstream from investment policy and strategy. There needs to be deeper thinking in respect of the investment policy and strategy.

The NTMA has an exclusions mechanism. Will we be able to tease out some of the exclusions and areas we should not be investing in and which have been identified, such as fossil fuels? I will have to dive further into the detail of the Bill. Our legislation on cluster munitions is explicitly clear in that there are certain areas where the State should not invest. Perhaps that legislation stands alone. We need to examine how we intersect with areas where we have legislative provisions for divestment mandates, such as in respect of fossil fuels and cluster munitions, and that we send a signal that it is not a case of money above all.We must ensure that we do not tie the hands of this new bank so it is in a position where it cannot say that it is concerned in relation to illegal settlements in occupied territories.

This is Ireland and these are the examples I am giving. We hope that much of this investment is happening in Ireland but there have been ethical issues in Ireland as well. For example, the Irish State in its previous investments was investing in vulture funds, which are competing with local authorities for housing. We had a situation where the State invested in a company that rebranded itself, after some controversy, as Genuity Science, which was a DNA database that was then bought by China and is quite problematic. There have been some very problematic investments and situations where the State as investor is working against the interests of the State as public representative and as the body entrusted with the public good. There is sometimes too broad and too untrammelled an investment mandate of “Go forth and make money for us”, which can end up working against the public good. Fundamentally, where it is public money, it needs to serve the public good.