No decision on State assets sales

Minister for Energy, Communications and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte said today the Government is still undecided on whether to sell non-strategic State assets.

This is despite Taoiseach Enda Kenny having told his parliamentary party meeting in Galway the coalition was intending to proceed with the sale of assets "as early as possible."

Mr Rabbitte said this morning the Government was still deciding which assets could be disposed of but there was a commitment to maintain majority State ownership of the transmission and distribution networks of energy firms.

"The lessons of the Telecom Éireann/Eircom experiences have been a very sore one...and you can't allow a situation where people can start trading in the networks because they can make profit and profit again and then starve the infrastructure of the necessary investment. That's what happened in the case of Eircom and we can't allow that to now happen in the case of the energy companies," he said.

The Government is required to raise €2 billion from the sale of assets under the EU-IMF bailout deal. The Coalition has been negotiating with European Union authorities for permission to use the proceeds of such sales to drive job creation, rather than to pay down national debt.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland today, Mr Rabbitte said agreement on the disposal of assets was not one the Government would willingly have made.

"It is not the kind of decision we would be voluntarily taking," admitted Mr Rabbitte. "To dispose of State assets, only to write down debt seems to me to be pretty futile."

The McCarthy Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities, published in April, recommended the disposal of a number of State assets in order to realise up to €5 billion.

Among the recommendations made in that report was for sections of the ESB, RTÉ and CIÉ to be sold into the private sector.

The Government has since accepted a recommendation by Mr Rabbitte against the break-up of the ESB.

Mr Rabbitte admitted there was pressure to sell off assets belonging to energy companies in particular as the McCarthy report had highlighted that as much as 70 per cent of the value of assets were in such firms.

"Against that backdrop you could be selling off some of the other assets until the cows come home and it won't make much impact in Frankfurt," he said.

However, Mr Rabbitte said energy sector assets were of strategic national interest and therefore needed to be protected.