DÁIL SKETCH:Minister pours sarcasm over Greek approach to austerity measures

IN HIS inimitable style Minister for Finance Michael Noonan took on People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett. It was finance question time in the Dáil and the laconic Minister barely changed facial expression throughout the entire hour and 15 minutes of questions.

He could be announcing Armageddon or a miraculous ending to Ireland’s massive debt problem and his voice would barely change. In this instance he was responding to the Dún Laoghaire TD’s consistently passionate outrage and opposition to the Government’s handling of the crisis.

He derided the Minister’s approach of “being the good boy in class” of bad EU member states in financial crisis. The “austerity poison” being inflicted on taxpayers to pay bankers’ “gambling debts” hadn’t worked.

Stop being the good boy of Europe and follow the Greek way, was his view.

The Minister complied. He said they would see if the Greek prescription worked. Was this the ultimate turnaround in Government policy. The move from being top of the class to the rebel of the EU.

But as always, it’s the way he tells it. He gave Boyd Barrett the prescription: “If you want to apply the Greek prescription to Ireland, go out on the streets, burn down the bank, hurt a few people, kill a few people ... and suddenly, you have a solution” he said.

A solution? Really? “Everybody will roll over and they will cancel your debts… and all live happily ever after.” He didn’t need to add the “Not”. The sarcasm was dripping from him.

The Minister for Finance said following that plan did not seem to working for Greece. “So I would not like to try it, take the Greek formula and prescribe it for Ireland.” Earlier though, he gave the European view of State assets. All modern economies in the last three decades were moving the operation of infrastructural assets from the public to the private sector he said.

“Any economic theory you’d like to read” would support the view that assets in private hands are more efficiently used for public benefit than in public hands, he said. Boyd Barrett was of the view that it was the Government’s plan to sell the assets and the big bad EU-IMF was the scapegoat for Coalition plans. He was also suspicious of the €2 billion limit in value and that there were calls for a much bigger €5 billion sale.

In a dead-pan and carefully worded response the Minister said they knew from “informal suggestions” from the troika that the €2 billion was a “modest” amount but he added that the EU-IMF hadn’t suggested a higher amount. But it will all be thrashed out next week when Ireland’s international bosses will be back in Dublin, to assess the good boy of Europe.

But it was when the People Before Profit TD asked the Minister to clarify the difference between a strategic and non-strategic asset the Minister responded that there was indeed a difference. “A minority shareholding in any State company is not strategic.” All the other semi-States mentioned for possible sale should be ready for action.