Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly is still concerned for his personal safety over the issue of Irish Water.

“It was very, very difficult dealing with the issue of threats to my family and my staff. I felt my personal safety was threatened for a long time. I still feel that it is threatened.

"So many people don't know what Irish Water does, many politicians sitting in Dáil Éireann don't know what they do, I challenge Fianna Fáil in particular to go and visit them," he said on RTÉ's Sean O'Rourke show.

The Labour deputy leader said that he believed the Fine Gael's full partnershop proposal to Fianna Fáil "is the only option in town."

“We need a stable government, a government that is going to be there for a period of time to continue where we have left off.

“The Labour party will never be a minor part of any Dáil, we always punch above our weight.

“Labour lost the election, now is the time to rebuild, to look at our identity, to go back to core values, to look at what we stand for, to re engage and talk to our members.

“We lost the last seat in a number of areas. With a small fractional change we could have had a few more seats,” he maintains.

“Labour went into government for five years, turned the country around, made the hard decisions, stood over them. We paid the price electorally. Some people now running in politics, populism is the trend, with no intention of being in government. Really, they are there permanently to be populist and to be in opposition. I can’t stand that.”

He went onto say that the Labour party is his life. “I have been involved since I was a child going to conferences with my parents. At this moment the Labour party has bigger issues than the leadership question.

“Fundamentally we are a party that represents workers. We need to go back to that. There is a space for the Labour Party in Irish politics.”