Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I suppose so.

The report by Frontier Economics was undertaken under a process overseen by Mr. Fergus Cahill as independent chair. The report contains an assessment of costs, benefits and regulatory impact of the options for unbundling the electricity transmission assets set in the context of the EU third package and the all-island single electricity market.

The process allowed for input from the direct stakeholders and other stakeholders. The direct stakeholders were the management and the unions of ESB and EirGrid and the ESB employee share ownership trust, ESOT.

Both EirGrid and ESB have vital roles to play in delivering our national electricity infrastructure. In July this year, the Government decided the ownership of the electricity transmission assets is to remain with the ESB while the operation and development of the transmission system will continue to be the responsibility of EirGrid. Following that decision, the Cahill-Frontier report was published on 27 July 2011 and is available on my Department's website.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

More generally, the programme for Government commits to the sale of €2 billion of State assets. The report of the review group on the sale of State assets has also been published and will be an input into the Government's consideration of any such sales. In this regard, I refer the Deputy to my earlier answer to the question concerning proposals for any sale of the ESB.

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