Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator. I am interested to hear her proposal because I did not know what it was grounded on when I looked at it. I will consider it more now. The Senator said she is worried there will be an expectation that profit should be the sole motive of Gas Networks Ireland and that would be brought about because the Minister for Finance is concerned with money. I did not foresee the Senator's argument.

Section 9(2) provides for the future majority-shareholding Minister in the event of a change from it being held by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The exceptions quoted in the subsection are those Ministers who could not be the majority-shareholding Minister into the future, namely, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. They are excluded from being appointed by order as majority-shareholding Minister in the Gas Regulation Act 2013 due to full ownership unbundling restrictions under the third gas directive. This does not apply to the Minister for Finance; therefore, there is no basis for that Minister to be excluded.

In other words, we are implementing the third gas directive. We had a look at the existing legislation from 2013 and picked the Ministers listed there because they are the ones required under EU law. I had not considered the Senator's argument regarding the Minister for Finance.