The privatisation of state assets and state commercial companies

Abstract

On a public road leading to Gormanstown beach there is a notice near the Army shooting range which says that care is to be taken when the warning flag is flying. I was reminded of this in preparing this paper. For a civil servant to speak in public on the politically controversial subject of privatisation, the warning flag flaps strongly in the breeze. I intend therefore to limit myself to considerations of a general nature and will not attempt to answer the question whether privatisation is a good thing or a bad thing. Since 1980 at least 55 State-owned entities have been privatised in countries across the world. The proceeds of these sales have totalled about #33 billion. Our nearest neighbour, the UK, now identified as the pioneer of privatisation, has in the past eight years privatised, either wholly or partially, 16 major publicly-owned enterprises and clearly intends to follow along this course. The sale of these enterprises, which employ 650,000 people and which before privatisation accounted for 40% of the State sector in the UK, raised a total of #17 5 billion sterling. Privatisation initiatives of one kind or another are under way throughout the world, in such diverse places as Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Australia - the list is a very long one. All of this activity would appear to indicate that, irrespective of whether privatisation is a good or a bad thing, there is a lot of it about, in one form or another.