Mr. John Dempsey:

In terms of the establishment budget, obviously we have talked about the amount but that represents the once-off upfront investment that is necessary to deliver on the Government objective of establishing the water utility and transforming the water industry over time, both in the short and medium term and out over the longer term. Again, as previously mentioned, that is a once in a 20 or 30-year decision. The benefits one derives from making that upfront investment are of two different types. The first type would be quality improvements in respect of customer service quality and the quality of one's network, its integrity and efficiency. Moving onto the second broad type of benefit one derives from the investment, one is talking about generating efficiency. Consequently, Irish Water as a company is under an obligation and will be scrutinised on this obligation by the CER to deliver efficiencies for the benefit of the consumer.

Looking at the eight year period to 2021, we project that we will achieve efficiencies on both operating expenditure and capital expenditure of the order of €1.1 billion. I should qualify that by saying we are subject to Commission for Energy Regulation review and when we go before the commission with our expenditure and revenue plans, it will scrutinise that.