We must not squander another precious asset

Your stark newspaper headline “Coillte sale ‘crucial’ to troika plan” casts a shadow over recent declarations, such as: “Ireland has regained its economic sovereignty”, “The country has successfully exited the bailout”, and “The troika has left our shores”.

This prompts one to borrow a phrase, used at a different time and in different circumstances: “they have not gone away, you know”.

There appears to be a direct contradiction between the Government’s decision, in June of last year, not to sell the harvesting rights to Coillte’s forests, and the ECB’s insistence that the Coillte privatisation was a crucial part of the EU/IMF bailout programme agreed by Ireland.