Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

Those who are opposed to this measure, as well as other proposals in the Green Paper which will reduce costs, benefit consumers and make the economy much more competitive, are engaging in scaremongering. A portion of the debt will be transferred with the asset.

I had a discussion with the unions yesterday about the number of workers who would be affected by this change. Over the last eight or ten years the ESB has done a number of good things, one of which has been to ensure practically all of its workers are multi-skilled — they can work on the distribution and transmission lines. I do not accept the figure of between 700 and 800 workers cited in some quarters. It is certainly not the figure from which the Commission for Energy Regulation operates when working out the costings for price increases in the electricity market. I do not accept that there are 700——

See this speech in context