Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

The Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, is absolutely correct to say that we pressurised him to maintain the ESB as a vertically integrated utility. That is correct and if that causes some problem for the Minister he will simply have to get over it. He did not mention that we also put the Government under pressure in respect of cuts in teaching numbers in DEIS programme schools. He might also have usefully observed that we have put the Government under pressure on the cutbacks that it envisages in community employment.

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