control of the brewery to Sir Benjamin's third son Edward (1847–1927), who was created Lord Iveagh in 1891 and Earl of Iveagh in 1919. Edward Guinness launched the company on the London Stock Exchange in 1886. Up until then, the only other partners outside of the Guinness family were members of the Purser family, who shared control of the brewery throughout most of the nineteenth century. He, his son Rupert and great-grandson Benjamin, the second and third Earls, chaired the Guinness company until the third earl's death in 1992. There are no longer any members of the Guinness family on the board. Plans On 17 June 2007, The Sunday Independent first reported that Diageo was considering selling most of the St. James's Gate Brewery to take advantage of high property prices in Ireland. The story was widely picked up by both national and international media organisations, but the proposal to build a new Dublin brewery at Leixlip on land belonging to Desmond Guinness was cancelled by the end of 2008. By then Irish property prices had dropped, and so the possibility of selling much of the current brewery to meet the lower cost of building a new one had passed. The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double-page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a "significant review of its operations". This review is largely due to the efforts of the company's ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James's Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for the development of the site thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James's Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250