“Taoiseach [prime minister] in company of sharks, not Irish people”

Joe Higgins condemns airline privatisation in parliament

Dáil Éireann: Leaders’ Questions, 5th April 2006

Joe Higgins (Socialist Party)

I notice the millionaire-owned press this morning warmly embraces the Government decision to privatise the national airline [Aer Lingus]. Why would it not do so given that some of its key players made a fortune in asset-stripping the previous major taxpayer-owned company the Government privatised, namely, Telecom Éireann? No doubt the directors of Greencore warmly applaud the decision to privatise Aer Lingus. After all, they made a fortune from another Fianna Fáil privatisation, never mind that they destroyed the beet and sugar industries and the jobs of hundreds of workers in the process. The millionaires who owned Irish Ferries will also warmly support the Government’s privatisation plans and might even buy shares. They might also be in a position to advise the new owners on how one takes a trade union workforce with reasonable pay, jobs and conditions and turns it into a yellow pack operation of exploited migrant workers. The bankers, to whom the Taoiseach wants us to be nice, will also applaud the decision as they will get enormous consultancy fees. In other words, in the privatisation of Aer Lingus the Taoiseach is in the company of sharks and not the majority of the Irish people. The decision to privatise the company, if implemented, will be one of the most outstanding acts of economic treachery committed by any Government in the history of the State.

In previous times, attacks on Aer Lingus or its workers would draw loud protests from Fianna Fáil backbench Deputies from north Dublin, [counties] Clare, Limerick or Cork but now that the greatest act of betrayal is imminent we hear not a whimper of opposition. A collapsed rugby scrum would emit more intelligible grunts than we have heard from Fianna Fáil Deputies in protest at the privatisation of Aer Lingus. If the airline’s workers from north Dublin had sent in cabbage heads from the local vegetable farms to decorate the benches behind the Taoiseach, they would get more decent representation in opposition to the privatisation plans than from those who people them at present.

Why does the Taoiseach persist with the fraudulent assertion that privatisation is necessary for funding when he is well aware that, if necessary, public funding to the tune of billions of euro can be wisely invested in this national asset? Shamefully, under his mandate our nationally-owned pension funds are invested in the murderous armaments trade and killer tobacco industries but are not allowed to be invested in a publicly-owned company.

The Government does not have a mandate from the people for this privatisation. Prior to the previous general election the Fianna Fáil Party did not go before the people with a commitment to privatise Aer Lingus. The workers in the company would be entirely justified in paralysing these privatisation plans with industrial action and would be acting far more democratically than the Government. I challenge the Taoiseach and his party to withdraw the privatisation plans and make them a key issue in the forthcoming general election. Let us debate the matter and allow the workers and people to have their view on it. I have no doubt what that will be.

The Taoiseach

One of the great features of parliamentary democracy is that people are entitled to hold opinions. The Deputy is entitled to his opinion but I disagree with practically everything he says and does on every issue and this one is no exception. His theory would have resulted in Aer Lingus’s closure. The company still employs 3,600 people. It employed 3,000 more when it was in State ownership and hamstrung by the constraints imposed by the State which prevented it from developing. These are the great things the Deputy would have.

J. Higgins

That is untrue. The Government refused to invest in Aer Lingus.

The Taoiseach

The Deputy’s small band of merry men and women in the company would always argue that Aer Lingus should be restricted, kept in State hands and not allowed to develop. They take pride in the fact that Aer Lingus, as our national airline—–

J. Higgins

The Taoiseach should address the issues.

The Taoiseach

I listened to the Deputy. Democracy works both ways and, like him, I am entitled to speak.

An Ceann Comhairle [Speaker]

Allow the Taoiseach to continue without interruption. Deputy Joe Higgins will have an opportunity to speak.

The Taoiseach

The Deputy would prefer Aer Lingus, when the European open skies policy comes into force, to continue to be able to fly into just five airports in the United States and have no opportunity to develop and grow and no chance of enhancing its status. Rather than unions and workers owning some of the shares, he would prefer them to be the slaves of what he sees as the capitalist class. He opposes workers owning shares and being able to have pride in their company. His ideology is gone, even in the most eastern parts of the communist world. His day and his old arguments are finished and he should realise it.

Minister D. Ahern

Even Deputy Rabbitte no longer believes them.

J. Higgins

The Taoiseach should return to his history books and learn the real history—–

(Interruptions).

An Ceann Comhairle

Allow Deputy Joe Higgins to continue please.

J. Higgins

I see one of the Cork Deputies has got his voice back. Perhaps he will raise it in support of Aer Lingus workers. The Taoiseach should go back to his history books and read the real history of socialism.

Minister D. Ahern

The crowd who used to print money.

J. Higgins

He would learn that the monstrous dictatorships in eastern Europe, with which Fianna Fáil Party Governments had diplomatic relations and its Ministers regularly visited, would be anathema to that for which the Socialist Party has always stood.

The Taoiseach has evaded the issues. Why are right-wing economists – not socialists – calling for the renationalisation of Eircom [electricity industry] following the disastrous outcome of that privatisation? The Independent Deputies, not all of whom are socialists, support maintaining Aer Lingus in public ownership, as do the company’s workforce and the people. It is the right-wing ideologues of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats [coalition governing party] who are pushing the privatisation agenda and forcing our national airline into the hands of sharks.

The Taoiseach should wake up. All over Latin America, for example, people are up in arms in opposition to the privatisation of crucial services such as water. The clock is turning against the neo-liberal agenda and towards the idea of investing in public companies. The way forward for Aer Lingus is to bring workers to the heart of the company and develop it democratically with a full input, not to take the Government’s route of handing it over to sharks and, inevitably, losing control of it. If in ten years the national airline has been asset-stripped by corporate vultures, with jobs, wages and working conditions ravaged, the Taoiseach may well be riding into the sunset, but it will remain as a monument of shame to the neo-liberal agenda he and his Government has pushed for the past nine years.

Minister Cullen

The Deputy would see it closed with his philosophy. That is the rubbish we heard in the 1960s.

J. Higgins

If I were the Minister, I would hide in the benches over there.

Minister Cullen

I will not hide. The Deputy will never find me hiding. I stand my ground.

J. Higgins

Remember the clapped out voting machines when you talk about old ideology.

Minister Cullen

That’s an old song. You should get something a bit more original.

The Taoiseach

Obviously the Deputy and I disagree on this and we will continue to disagree. I remind the Deputy that, before it was liberalised, the old Department of Posts and Telegraphs was in place when I was first elected to the House. One of the biggest issues for constituents was having to wait four or five years to get a telephone. There were no telephones.

Deputy Stagg [Labour]

They are waiting again now.

The Taoiseach

People could not make telephone calls. Now one can walk into any office or premises and get a telephone on the same day.

Deputy Stagg

They cannot.

(Interruptions).

The Taoiseach

There is huge competition now.

(Interruptions).

An Ceann Comhairle

Members of the Labour Party are not members of Deputy Joe Higgins’s party. He asked a question and he is entitled to hear the reply without interruption.

Minister D. Ahern

They would sell their souls to anybody.

The Taoiseach

They would make an excellent Government by renationalising the telephone system to bring us back to the dark past. I suppose they would ban mobile telephones as well.

(Interruptions).

An Ceann Comhairle

Allow the Taoiseach to continue. Deputy Joe Higgins had his opportunity to speak.

The Taoiseach

I will say two things because obviously I will not be allowed to speak. Deputy Joe Higgins argued for years – I admire him for this – about how great the countries of eastern Europe were and how we should be the same.

J. Higgins

This is incredible.

The Taoiseach

The Deputy argued for that.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Joe Higgins must resume his seat. He had an opportunity to speak.

J. Higgins

This is slanderous.

The Taoiseach

The truth is always slanderous.

J. Higgins

The Taoiseach cannot explain—–

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Joe Higgins had his opportunity to speak.

J. Higgins

—–the difference between Stalinism and democratic socialism.

The Taoiseach

Deputy Higgins would tell all the countries that joined the European Union that they were wrong and that they should re-nationalise all the companies they have sold. He believes that but I think it is rubbish and, thankfully, the people in those countries think it is rubbish as well. I reject the Deputy following that course here.

Aer Lingus in its current situation can hardly manage to deal with the five airports it flies to in the United States. However, there are 22 locations in the United States that want to do business with this country.

Deputy Stagg

The Government will not invest in the company.

The Taoiseach

Please listen. It is not possible to fly people from these locations if one does not have the aircraft. I am sure the Deputy understands that.

Deputy M. Higgins [Labour]

What about a flying voting machine?

The Taoiseach

Therefore, we need investment to bring people here. If we can bring these people to different regions of the country, it will develop tourism, which will create jobs and allow us to become a modern country.

Deputy Stagg

One does not have to sell Aer Lingus to do that.

The Taoiseach

I know Deputy Higgins does not particularly like that but that is what I want to do for the future. I believe this policy is the right one.

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