Ms Geraldine Tallon:

I recently saw an extract from the report and found it interesting. We do not use private finance in the water area, so all the projects about which we are talking here are design-build-operate-maintain, DBOM. They are not design-build-finance, DBF.

We have found that the projects that attract private finance are of a higher scale than the majority of our projects. Our understanding is that a project of less than €40 million to €50 million would not be suitable for private financing because of high set-up costs, due diligence and so on. We have come to the view that as things stand in the water services area DBOM has given the best value, from our point of view. We have to look at cost of finance for water services, and private finance is somewhat more costly than the public finance we have provided. We look at issues of project management experience, delivery and risk. In general, while I was interested in the references in the report I am not in a position to say I can relate it to our water services operation. Whatever about other areas of PPP, in the water services area we have not, so far, used private finance. It may be a matter for the future, in terms of Irish Water. I do not know.