Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It has happened and all we are doing today is tidying up the legislation to acknowledge the reality that the brand inevitably was part of what was for sale and was part of what attracted the new owners. The brand will hopefully grow and employ more people in Ireland. It certainly brings considerable resources behind this competitor in the marketplace. As a result we need to come up with a new name for the holding company. The companies in the Ervia stable will do business as Irish Water and Gas Networks Ireland, but there has to be a name for a holding company. That is all we seek to do here.

I know Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan resorts to assistance about seeing into the future and he says he knows that the purpose is to privatise Irish Water and to privatise this, and hence his imaginative solution, an bord imithe. We have made plain 100 times that we are creating a new utility, Irish Water, in State ownership. It is very difficult in the business of adversarial politics to win out when one is accused of doing something, and it is a matter of fact that one does not do it and one's critics insist one will still do it in the future.

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