Mr. Paul O'Donoghue:

We definitely drew on our own capabilities, most particularly in our energy supply business. Our energy supply side already had Oracle customer care and billing, CCB, installed and implemented three years ago. As a result, we had expertise within the energy supply business on the process design and project management sides. They knew how to specify processes for billing for a utility and translate this into code in an Oracle CCB system. What we did not have were the people to write the code, as well as those who could implement and integrate the systems. The latter group is important as a modern utility needs systems to talk to each other, as much of the automation and many of the efficiencies are based on the degree to which one’s systems interact with one another. We took 15 staff from our energy supply side and put them into this programme in the early days. They helped us to draw up the tender documents which allowed us to procure the experts who would take the brain-dump from these 15 people, translate it into code in the systems and get them to talk to each other. That expertise is not what one would carry as part of one’s standing staff complement. One would not keep it enduringly in an organisation because one will only set up a system like this once every 15 or 20 years. Those whom we hired to do this were typically doing similar projects in the United States. They will probably go to similar implementation projects in the UK or elsewhere after this. They are global nomads. Organisations like Irish Water do not keep them on the books because one only needs them once in a while.