McKenna rejects De Rossa privatisation claim

Former Green MEP and chairperson of the People's Movement Patricia McKenna has rejected a claim by Labour's Pronsias De Rossa that she called for the privatisation of the ESB in 2003.

In a statement issued today, Mr De Rossa claimed Ms McKenna had "repeatedly" called for ESB privatisation in questions submitted to the European Commission on the Government’s Alternative Energy Requirement (AER) tendering process.

Under the AER programme, the Government aims to have 13.2 per cent of the Republic's electricity needs generated from green energy sources by 2010.

The then Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, announced in 2004 that 30 operators, with a total capacity of to generate 238 megawatts (mw) of electricity, would get contracts to supply the ESB for 15 years.

Mr De Rossa said Ms McKenna had urged the Commission to prevent the ESB and its subsidiaries from taking part in the programme and said her position on the privatisation of public services was "contemptuous of public intelligence".

The Dublin MEP claimed Ms McKenna's parliamentary record showed that "she repeatedly pushed the Commission to declare that elements of the ESB’s operations should be privatised."

However, speaking to The Irish Times this evening, Ms McKenna expressed her surprise at Mr De Rossa's claim. She said Mr De Rossa was "mixing up privatisation and liberalisation".

Her questioning was about the unbundling of a network where smaller operators were being outbid "by the powerful ESB", she said.

"What I wanted was to separate the ownership and control of the network from the generators. This is a far cry from pushing for privatisation and for Mr DeRossa to suggest such a thing displays either total ignorance of the issue or a willfully intent to mislead the public."

"I was urging that it should be possible for other non-ESB parties to participate in the market, and this is in fact liberalisation, which is EU policy and presumably supported by Mr.DeRossa," she said.

She said: Mr de Rossa and others in the Yes campaign were "in a state of panic" because, she claimed, "their private polling and canvassing is showing the Irish people are not being conned or bullied into agreeing to a treaty that will take Europe in the direction of a federal state where big business rather than the people are sovereign.”