Ms Eileen Fitzpatrick:

Our role is very much as a captive corporate finance adviser for Government in terms of finance, funding and capital structures. We would, for example, produce models of what the future cashflow of Irish Water would be under certain scenarios. We are not in the policy-making area.

In terms of Bord Gáis, the Bord Gáis entity will have a big network company which is cashflow positive and it will have Irish Water. One of the ideas around giving that remit to Bord Gáis is that it already carries out activities such as IT platforms and customer services on which it could piggyback instead of starting off from scratch. That is just an example of the infrastructure.

The last part of the remit relates to the restructuring or disposal of State assets, where requested by Government. That would include refocusing semi-State companies that were set up a long time ago for various purposes, streamlining and whatever the Government asks us to examine in that respect.

In terms of Heathrow, I do not have my notes on that particular aspect of Aer Lingus. Our 25% shareholding with another small block of votes confers some form of veto over-----