It began with an exclusive in the Irish Sunday Independent newspaper - KPN - Telia´s 35% holding in Eircom was to be sold off. The announcement was expected on Wednesday when Eircom would announce results. The markets over the last few days have been concentrating on this sell-off. When Eircom´s results were published today, the profit was up 17% on last year´s profit but this profit was absorbed by the exceptional costs such as getting rid of 3500 employees.

The stock market has reacted badly to the news and the Eircom shareprice is down to 327 from Friday´s close of Euro 372. The disturbing thing for the 500,000 Eircom small stockholders is that the Eircom´s annual results published today do not seem to have made any impact on the slide.

The Eircom stock price was at an all-time low and closed at e3.29. The stock is also down on the NASDAQ and it is expected to fall further.

When Kane was asked whether the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O´Rourke had got it wrong, he agreed that she had. O´Rourke apparently reacted badly to this criticism.

Reacting to the comments in the Dail this morning, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern defended the government´s overpricing of the Eircom stock relative to the market. He claimed that the government could have priced the offering higher but chose not to. This non-denial denial will come as little comfort to all the small shareholders in Eircom who have bought into Eircom and held the shares as they sank. In effect the Eircom IPO was the government selling off an asset of the people to the people and screwing the people in the process.