The figures look all over the place?

We’re screwed. Govt artificially increased the price of electricity to create competition. How dumb was that?
Now we have ‘competition’ for electricity customers from the state owned gas company.

Eh who has the money to buy?

Which one is losing the most money should be the one to be sold. How about CIE and Dublin bus privatize the transport industry it “might” improve the services or at least part privatize and get some competition in pricing. Although what usually happens is the price increases, I mean look at esb airtricity and bord Gais which is cheapest again? They all up there prices at the same time now. How about getting an investigation into how are bond interest rates rose so high? Who was behind this?

The way they value stuff, makes us worth less than we owe.

we ARE worth less than we owe. thats the problem. we should only privatise the areas making the state most money through sale. i dont think the state should provide energy anyway.

Sell the lot of them. This country is being ripped off by the entitled semi-state classes.

Well, they can sell off the offices of the Department of Finance for a start, as its clear we’ve out sourced their capability to the Germans

when do you ever get anything cheap with privatisation. the only ones that gain are share holders. where will the money go if these are sold off ,will our debt be clear . no what we will have is dearer bus ,train and fuel bills and all owned by greedy private firms. wake up people.

Reads like a longer version of monopoly

The problem with the government, they will give guarantees to whoever buys the assists (just like roads) and our taxes will be supplementing them.

Very careful consideration need’s to be taken into account
when deciding which assest’s need to be sold (If any ) , once the deed is done it can’t be undone if it is considered at a later date that it was a mistake to do so ……

The word i have for this is LOOTING nothing else ,people of Ireland wake up

how about getting rid of the goverment before we end up owing more money. This goverment is going to first bankrupt this county and then destroy our state assets. Only last night I heard that the central bank is printing the punt. but of course the central bank has denied this. no smoke without fire springs to mind. get them out .

How about we sell off the massive reserves of oil and gas off our coasts? Oh wait we gave them away already for F**k all!

Depressing though it is I’m not sure a privatised ESB, Aer Lingus or Bord Gais would make much difference to me, but selling Coillte would be my personal breaking point. The only thing that keeps me sane these days is rambling about the few forested bits of the least-forested country in Europe – even with retaining state ownership of the land, will a privatised forestry environment guarantee the casual access that Coillte offers, or will it be five minutes before ‘health and safety’ and ‘insurance issues’ force citizens firmly out of their trees?

Deeply suspicious how closely Bertie has been involved in that particular plot (let’s call it what it is). Wherever that man has his fingers, you can be sure it’s not in our best interests.

Howabout we sell the whole country to the United States?
All our debts get written off in return, we get a stable currency, and US companies get a base in Europe.
We get rid of our politicians, and get a governor. Petrol will be cheap and pickup trucks for everyone and Hulu will work here!
NFL in Croker every week, and Beer for sale at the games as well.
Its all good :-)

Has anybody seen the documentary “the shock doctrine”? Looks to be happening here!

Roll up, roll up. Ireland’s for sale. Everything must go.

So, we sell all of or a majority of these states and we suddenly find out private companies run our essential services. So in the end; EU runs our budgeting mechanism, global corporations run our ports, airline carriers, trains, energy supply and so forth. So which part of Sovereign nation are we? But don’t fear, we will still pay taxes for a Government that runs nothing and past ministers and officials whose pensions will need to be paid, which effectively make up the large part of our taxes, as everything else will be privatised!

We should only sell any state asset that’s costing the taxpayer’s too much money.
Each EU/IMF bailout programs for Greece/Ireland/Portugal tells each country sell all the “family silver” or no bailout.I think theirs a conflict of interests behind the scenes because private buyers are rubbing their hands because of low prices these assets are currently at.
You can see this happen in Greece with all their state assets in the hands of the Germans
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304906004576369572348921238.html.

Why can’t their be a 50/50 private and state ownership on these assets or some kinda lease?
If these are sold then six months down the road price hike’s will happen.
Our government is already ruled by Brussels,Now sticky handed foreign investors are going to OWN our most important infrastructure making them nothing more then money making machines for the rich shareholders.

We have been invaded by an invisible force because in the space of 5 years now our government is nothing more then a house of representatives for the EU and our infrastructure soon to be owned by the mega rich.
Things don’t happen by mistake and especially when the same thing is happening in Ireland/Greece and Portugal.

SELL, SELL, SELL. We need to get some competition into this country. The price of everything seems to be falling except for government controlled cartels. Public transport is ineffective, expensive and badly needs to be shaken up. Electricity and gas are too expensive with no regulation which is killing jobs. While they’re selling they should also sell all their road maintenance equipment seeing as they’re not able to use it. Also sell off about 75% of the councilors and politicians.

all should be sold with the exception of two – Bord na Mona and Coillte. these two assets have much more value than simply monetary value. both look after sensitive ecosystems. private companies couldn’t be trusted to maintain these areas.

Sell RTE, Bord Gais and ESB, but keep control of the networks. Sell air lingus, DAA. Any thing with importance or land should be kept ie coilte, Dublin port.

Please sell the Seanad..

The reality is when these assets are sold off prices will rocket as the state will no longer subsidise them . For example if they Privatise C.I.E where does that leave the bus pass. What about the Licence fee for RTE.Some of these assets are loss making so where does that leave us. Buyers will want to buy them at a bargain.

the list above is good. I’d break up CIE and sell off Irish Rail and Dublin Bus and keep Bus Eireann in public hands as it provides essential services and has private competition already keeping prices low. the condition of the sale of IE and BAC should be that the existing routes should be kept in the private contract.

Wake up to the shock doctrine people. Governments use times of crises to do things that under normal circumstances people would rebel against, but because they’re in shock it’s less of shock anyway, if you get me. Think of the events after 9/11 when america was in shock and bush introduced Patriot Act, invaded Iraq with no evidence of wmd’s, deregulated everything from big pharma to the fed- then after bombing the hell out of Iraq, they looted them by opening the oil companies to foreign investment under the guise of economic development. And now we’re being looted of our assets. Knowing these tactics is the first step to combatting them. Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.

still can’t get my head around why so many people think privatisation is good. private enterprise is only out to make money. so logically most state assets don’t make a profit. that’s why we pay taxes. So we will end up without doubt paying more for these services. M50 a classic example. Ryan air another.cheap flight add the taxes cheap?

Kenny will do as his idol Thatcher, loot Irish national assets to sell to his pals at knock down prices. Quite a retirement package with a guarantee of a paid place on the board no doubt.

kenny should not have this remit it to important . I know they were elected not by me I may add. but this kind of issue should go to a vote. people we have the technology we can rebuild it .

You left out The National Lottery!

Sell RTE, and get rid of the scam that is the license fee.

to everyone that said we should sell off everything:

I don’t know if any of you are old enough to remember this, but air lingus (as an example) was sold and renationalised (at great expense each time to the Irish taxpayer) at least 2 times that I can remember (when it was in danger of being closed down due to losses)

Irish Steel – another example – sold to the one of the richest foreign (Indian as it turned out) business men in the world – Ispat – he went on to asset strip it – sold everything at huge profit – and then left a mess in Cork harbour that is still there today and still hasn’t been cleaned up (and we’re talking noxious dangerous cancerous chemicals) – that’s going to cost millions to clean up

2 of the above examples – and again here we go – just remember IT’LL ALWAYS be the taxpayer that pays/loses out in the end

Landing slots at heathrow are worth £30 mil a piece on the open market (ref. continental purchase 2010).. Aer Lingus has 23 pair… The government own 25% of tha airline or approx 6 slots… Value £180 mil, why would you sell that for €100 mil?

Are it’s pension and other liabilities that big? Or is it a depressed asset?

There’s so many errors in the way the figures are written in the article its funny. For example the net assets of aerlingus are said to be 1.3 million roughly but then the revenue 1.4 billion. Really could you at least read over the article prior to posting it on a national forum. The thousands of millions, billions, omissions of millions at the end of number etc makes the whole article lose any validity!