EDITORIAL : THE INDEPENDENT.ie, IRELAND

What price for our national family silver?

CAN sales of state assets -- "selling off the family silver" -- help us in any substantial way to reduce the yawning deficit in the Government's finances and give us a leaner and more vigorous future? Clearly the European Union and the International Monetary Fund think so.

Proposals for such sales were in the air long before the EU-IMF bailout, but they have taken on added force since the deal was concluded. They have featured in other bailouts. For example, the EU and IMF want Greece to raise no less than €10bn in this manner.

Now Colm McCarthy, the eminent economist commissioned by the outgoing government to examine the question, has sent detailed proposals to the new Government. They include some ingenious ideas.

Coillte, the state forestry company, could sell the growing trees but not the land they grow on. Similarly, Bord na Mona could sell the rights to extract the peat but keep the land underneath. Later, the two companies -- or a single merged company -- could stay in business, albeit engaged in different activities. Let us hope that these activities would be profitable.

All this not only accords with the views of the EU and the IMF but makes excellent sense. There is no obvious reason why the State should be involved in forests or bogs, any more than in growing vegetables or breeding cattle.

But many difficult questions remain, and the bigger the company involved, the harder the question.

Far more valuable than Coillte or Bord na Mona are the ESB and Bord Gais. Would selling all or part of them make a radical difference to the Government's finances? Possibly, but the Government must not underestimate the problems that will arise.

Would such moves help us to achieve an efficient energy market? That is impossible to answer at this stage.

What of the huge deficits in several of the state companies' pension funds? Will the burden fall, as usual, on the taxpayers?

Will a slimmed-down system produce the efficiencies, and the new outlook, that we need so urgently? And does a Fine Gael-Labour coalition have the political will to carry the process through?

Our "family silver" is badly tarnished. But powerful vested interests want to keep it that way. At worst, reform could lead to full-scale confrontation with the trade unions.

The Government must ensure that it acts on the basis of a fully comprehensive, workable plan.

 Greens must now plant the seeds of renewal

JOHN Gormley has announced his intention to resign as leader of the Green Party. His move was inevitable in the wake of the general election, when the party lost all its six Dail seats, including Mr Gormley's.
The party had not had a happy time in office.
Its Fianna Fail coalition partners showered it with cabinet and junior ministries and other favours, but it exerted no serious influence on policy, for two reasons.
First, Fianna Fail was, and remains, totally indifferent to environmental aspirations.
Secondly, the Green Party was simply too small.
It lacked muscle.
On the overwhelming issue of our time -- the economic crash -- it might as well have not existed.
A point of complete absurdity was reached when it made a critical issue out of the stag-hunting ban, a matter in which 90pc of the population had no interest. At the same time, it failed spectacularly to make progress on the environmental questions that chiefly concerned its supporters.
These issues will not go away. The tragic events in Japan have brought one of them, nuclear power, to the forefront of world-wide debate.
Green parties, here and elsewhere, still have a future.
That future, however, remains to be built.
To attain a real place in the Irish political system, the Greens will have to shed their eccentric image and get in touch with the feelings and aspirations of ordinary voters.
Mr Gormley's successor will have to build from the ground up.