Sign our petition to stop the sale of AIB shares

Posted on May 22, 2017 at 12:34 PM

On Thursday, Dáil Éireann passed a Labour Party motion that calls on the Government to postpone the sale of AIB shares until the fiscal rules are changed to permit enhanced capital spending, rather than using these proceeds to deliver a meaningless reduction of just over 1% to our debt-GDP ratio.

Michael Noonan has now announced that he is going to ignore the decision of the Dáil, and that is not good enough. Sign our petition that calls on the Government to abide by the decision of the Dáil.

AIB was bailed out with over €20 billion of public funds, most of it from the National Pension Reserve Fund. Any funding raised from the sale of AIB shares should be used for the benefit of our people, in a meaningful way.

This is the first time that any Government has attempted to sell such a valuable state asset without seeking prior Dáil approval. Indeed, they now intend to proceed despite the passage of a motion in the Dáil telling them not to. There is nothing to stop the Minister for Finance from tabling a motion to reverse this decision if he believes he has the support to do so. But he won’t even bother doing that.

Dáil votes on such motions have previously triggered general elections. If we are to successfully counter public cynicism in the operation of politics, the views of Dáil Éireann must be respected.

Sign our petition today, and tell the Government to shelve their plans to begin the sale of AIB shares, and instead focus on seeking changes to the spending rules to allow for much greater investment in badly needed infrastructure.

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