I am opposed to the National Development Finance Agency Bill, 2002. It is nothing more than a thinly disguised project to provide for major privatisation of crucial public utilities and services.
The explanatory memoranda to the Bill states that it is to provide for the cost effective financing for priority infrastructure as an alternative to up-front Exchequer funding or "unsuitable" private sector funding. Unsuitable private sector funding by its very definition could not be used. The development agency provided for here will find alternatives to public funding. It will push aside public funding in key infrastructural projects and services so that private capitalists can move in, take over and make a killing in the process.
This Bill is from the top drawer of IBEC. Chris Dooley, industry and employment correspondent of The Irish Times, writing on 11 November, stated:
Employers have called for "as many Government services as possible" to be outsourced to the private sector as part of a new national partnership agreement.
In talks with the other social partners, IBEC has also called for the transport and energy markets to liberalised as a priority action in dealing with inflation.
In other words, it wants to privatise the buses, the rail network and ESB. The article also states:
As part of a ten-point plan to tackle inflation, it said as many Government services as possible should be outsourced to the private sector, should be "fast-tracked" through greater use of public-private partnerships.
That is the IBEC programme and that is the programme the Minister for Finance is presenting to us in this Bill. The bosses command and the Minister for Finance dances to attention. That it why the National Development Finance Agency Bill is before the House.
How can finance from private capitalists be more cost effective than the State for public projects since the State can raise funds more cheaply than anyone else? Private capitalists will want a substantial return on whatever funds they will put in. That return will be paid by the taxpayer, squeezed out of the citizen, in road tolls and the like.
The best known example of public private partnership is the West-Link toll bridge in my constituency. It was built several years ago by a private company. It has turned into a gold mine for National Toll Roads, the company that built and operates it. In the last figures available on its website, in the first six months of 2000, it had profits of €9.3 million. That is paid for by hard pressed motorists, usually workers going to and from work, who already pay significant taxes as PAYE workers, are taxed on the cars they are obliged to drive because of the abysmal nature of public transport and on the fuel they consume in their cars. To get to work, however, they are further held to ransom by this private company.
The effects of this project are entirely anti-social. The West-Link toll bridge is the biggest obstacle to traffic flow in Dublin. Hard pressed workers, after a hard day, have to sit in queues from the West-Link toll bridge all the way back to Finglas if they are going south. The converse must be endured on the way to work. This is the reality of what is being provided for in the National Development Finance Agency Bill. The Government wants to replicate the West-Link toll bridge in bypasses and bridges around the country and hold to ransom the people in the provinces as much as those in Dublin.
Some of the examples of public private partnership, which is at an early stage in some crucial services, bear out the utter impracticality of the idea. It will not work. It will not provide the quality services it is supposed to provide. I predict there will be chaos in areas of the public sector such as education into which it is now being extended.
The Minister for Education and Science has a public private partnership project, signed in November 2001 with Jarvis Projects Limited, to design, build, finance and operate five schools. The capital cost of the schools is €60.64 million and the Minister is entering into a 20 year contract with this firm to service these schools. He is providing at this stage a total of €244 million for that purpose. Projecting in advance in this way is absolutely ludicrous. As happened in Britain, public private partnerships, or the private finance initiative as it is often called there, will be a rip-off of the public purse and taxpayers and a source of unending frustration to the communities depending on these services.
We know that much more is coming down the road in this regard. During the course of the Nice treaty debate, I highlighted on behalf of the Socialist Party, as did others, the drive by the EU Commission to introduce a regime of widespread privatisation of crucial public utilities and services such as water, the post office, electricity and so on. Following ratification of the Nice treaty, the EU Commission will be in negotiations with the World Trade Organisation to bring about a situation where there will be massive pressure on this State and other states to privatise crucial services, such as water services, that the Irish people would not even think of removing from public hands.
Surely we should learn from the rip-off which is occurring in Britain and which is a source of scandal on an increasingly frequent basis in that jurisdiction. My Socialist Party colleague and former Member of Parliament, Councillor Dave Nellist, brought to my attention an instructive example. He is currently a councillor in Coventry. Some ten years ago plans were drawn up to fully modernise two national health service hospitals in the Coventry area at a cost of £60 million. The Tory Government then went on its binge of public finance initiatives – privatisation in reality – and it was decided in that context to build one hospital by a private company, which would be privately owned and then leased back to the National Health Service for the following 30 years. The price then began to increase relentlessly. In April 1999, the figure put on the project was £174 million. Some time later it was £290 million and now it is to be built for a price put by the builders of approximately £370 million. Therefore, my colleague summarises the farce, except it is at the expense of British taxpayers and the sick. In a few short years they have gone from two public National Health Service hospitals to a proposal for a single privately-owned hospital, leased to the National Health Service, with less beds, less staff, in a location no one wants and so far costing more than six times the price of modernisation of our two hospitals. He concludes by saying, "No wonder PFI stands for profits from illness."
That is the reality of what the whole process is about. The process is about milking the public purse and, despite all that is said in the Bill about the provision for special purpose companies and the declaration that these special companies will not be able to call on the Exchequer for any bad debts and so on, it is inevitable that down the line taxpayers will have to bail out these projects which will go on the rocks. What we will have is a severe deterioration in services because the thrust of whatever private company is involved in the design, build and operation of crucial utilities will be to maximise private profit and a return to shareholders who very often are multinational corporations, big financial institutions and so on. That is their raison d'être, not to provide public services for ordinary people in society to the best extent possible.
Moving on to some of the specific provisions in the Bill, the board of the national development finance agency, if set up, will be appointed by the Minister for Finance. Given the Minister for Finance and the Government we have at present who are absolutely wedded to privatisation, the ethos of private capitalism and domination by multinational corporations, there will be appointed to that board primarily representatives of big business and people who share the right-wing ideology of the Minister. I am amazed at the weakness of the provision in the Bill which provides for the arising of a conflict of interest. Of course, there is an absolutely fundamental conflict of interest in having big business representatives on the national development finance agency board when as private capitalists they have a vested interest in steering as much of these projects as possible in their direction and at terms favourable to private capital.
Should the conflict of interest be proved to have arisen in a specific sense, apart from the general conflict of interest, section 15 does not lay out any disciplinary code or disciplinary measures whatsoever for a board member, or indeed for staff or other senior people, shown to have a conflict of interest. In regard to senior staff or others, the Bill states that the Minister for Finance will decide appropriate action. Why is the consequence of a conflict of interest not provided for in the Bill?
There is a further extraordinary section 18, which is amazing and must be changed. It provides that the board of the national development finance agency can be questioned by the Committee of Public Accounts. However, section 18(7) states:
The Chief Executive Officer and the Chairperson, if required under subsection (6) to give evidence, shall not:
(a) question or express an opinion on the merits of any policy of the Government or a Minister of the Government or the Attorney General or on the merits of the objectives of such a policy, or
(b) produce or send to a committee a specified document in which the Chief Executive Officer or the Chairperson questions or expresses an opinion on the merits of any such policy or such objectives.
This is absolutely extraordinary. This is supposed to be one of the most powerful committees of Dáil Éireann which represents taxpayers. However, the chief executive officer of this agency, that is to have control of up to €5 billion in funding, will not be able to say to elected representatives that a policy the Minister obliges them to carry out is bad value for money or is not in the interests of the taxpayer. If this happened in a Stalinist society, it would be called heavy-handed. It has to go.
Bille náireach eile ón Rialtas is ea an Bille um Ghníomhaireacht Airgeadais d'Fhorbairt Náisiúnta, 2002, a bhfuil fealsúnacht an eite dheis agus fealsúnacht an Aire Airgeadais le fáil thar cuimse ann. Bille é a dhéanann maoin an phobail a dhíriú i dtreo lucht mór ghnó agus lucht an rachmais phríobháidigh. Tugann an Bille seirbhísí phoiblí, atá thar a bheith riachtanach do mhuintir na tíre, do lucht mór gnó i dtreo is gur féidir leo an oiread brabúis agus is féidir a tharraingt astu. Tá an Rialtas ag iarraidh a rá linn go bhfuil seo ar mhaithe leis na seirbhísí seo agus ar mhaithe le muintir na tíre. Níl sé sin fíor ar chor ar bith.
An mhalairt a mholfainn do sin ná go ndéanfaí seirbhísí phoiblí a fhorbairt in úinéireacht poiblí ach le córas daonlathach ina dtabharfaí an lucht oibre, go speisialta, go lár baill na gcomhluchtaí agus na seirbhísí úd i dtreo is gur féidir linn seirbhís de shaghas nua agus de chaighdeán árd a chur ar fáil dár ndaoine. Sin í an mhalairt, seachas tuilleadh airgid agus tuilleadh cánach mhuintir na hÉireann a thabhairt do mhionlach bheag, sé sin an lucht gnó atá báúil don Rialtas.