THE GOVERNMENT is to appoint an expert group to assess the scale and value of the assets and liabilities of semi-State companies. It is envisaged that its report will be sent to the Government later this year.
“This is a stock-take and part of prudent financial management with no predetermined outcome,” a Government spokesman said yesterday.
The spokesman said a reference to a "massive sell-off" in the Sunday Business Postyesterday was just speculation.
It is expected the group will be chaired by economist Colm McCarthy, who produced the “Bord Snip Nua” report last year recommending more than €5 billion in public expenditure cuts.
Tánaiste Mary Coughlan said yesterday the Government was taking an inventory of State assets, with the information coming available to it at the end of the year.
“It is part of the overall process in dealing with our public finances where we reduce expenditure in the public service.”
Ms Coughlan said the Government was getting greater synergies between a number of State departments in reducing the cost of government.
“We are going to have a look at everything, and we will be back again in the process currently of preparing the next budget,” she added.
Speaking on the RTÉ programme The Week In Politics, Ms Coughlan said she did not want to add in any way to any thought processes that were out there.
“We are only at the beginning of this,” she said.
“It will take some time to come to the end of our deliberations in the €3 billion reduction that we have to obtain, and it is a difficult decision that is going to have to be made.”
Ms Coughlan said a number of semi-State companies were quite buoyant, involving themselves in new initiatives.
“They have created wealth and are hugely important,” she added.
Many of them were strategic, said Ms Coughlan, and any decisions made about them would have to be in an overall situation.
The Fine Gael spokesman on communications, energy and natural resources, Leo Varadkar, said the proceeds from the sale of any semi-State companies must be ringfenced for investment in jobs and improving infrastructure.
Mr Varadkar said that despite engaging in disingenuous criticism of Fine Gael’s “new era” proposals, the Government now appeared to be adopting elements of them.
There was a real fear, he added, that the Government would plough any proceeds “into the big pot of day-to-day spending which will have no impact on Ireland’s jobs crisis”.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan said his party would resist “every and any attempt to sell off the family silver”.
Private banks and not semi-State companies had caused the current economic crisis, said Mr Morgan.
He said the history of privatising companies had led to a diminishment in services.
“It also leads to unstable working conditions, as the Eircom employees can testify.”
The Government’s move will be raised in the Dáil this week by the Opposition parties. Clarification will be demanded from Taoiseach Brian Cowen on what precisely is involved before the House adjourns for the summer recess on Thursday.
The new Fine Gael front bench will be facing the Government for the first time and will want to make an immediate impact before the break for the summer holidays.