Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

My understanding is that in 2006, if I recall correctly, the instigator for the separation of the ownership was set out in a Deloitte report. That initial report was considered by the Government at the time. It was quite a complex report but one of its elements was towards the separation. The initial costings and economic analysis were set within that. This report is for the purpose of getting firm economic costings. The Department was obviously working on how to do this on a statutory basis. From a policy viewpoint, my strategic sense is that this makes sense but we were always going to have to go through the process of carrying out the detailed cost-benefit analysis and examining the transactional costs involved in the separation. That is the reason the Frontier Economics report was commissioned and this process has been undertaken.

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