TÁNAISTE Eamon Gilmore has rejected claims of “fire sales” or “wholesale privatisations” of semi-State companies. “We have to reform the way in which things have been done in the past,” Mr Gilmore told the Dáil, to get people back to work and create new jobs.

But he insisted there was no fire sale and “there is no wholesale privatisation of State assets”. He said the Government was taking a “strategic approach to investment in the Irish economy”.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald had accused Labour of going back on pre-election promises about opposition to “short-term privatisation, but that is precisely what you are proposing to do, to cash in the chips of the semi-States.”

She said a threat of €2 billion of privatisation “has now morphed into a €5 billion fire sale of the State’s family silver” and the Government was engaged in “wholesale privatisations”.

Amid reports of EU-IMF pressure to raise €5 billion, the Dublin Central TD claimed Labour had “bent the knee” to the EU troika and to Fine Gael on selling State-owned companies.

Companies such as “the ESB, Bord Gáis, Eirgrid, Bord na Móna and Coillte are all profitable industries. They have consistently self-financed, consistently returned a dividend to the exchequer and consistently employed thousands of people and they have been built up over generations of investment by Irish taxpayers.”

She said the semi-States could generate employment but would deliver their “full value in the medium and long term to the State, citizens and taxpayers only if they are kept in public ownership”.

Insisting there was no wholesale privatisation of semi-State companies, Mr Gilmore said the Government was taking a “whole portfolio approach to the State companies”. The Government “will change the way in which the companies are used so that we can get maximum value from our semi-State sector”, by investing in the economy and creating jobs.

Mr Gilmore, accusing Sinn Feéin of “not wanting to change anything”, said the Government was “in the business of effecting change and that means we will change the way in which our semi-State companies are used in our economy”.