Mr. John Tierney:

During the establishment phase a number of parties are involved in the process, including Government Departments, the regulator, Irish Water and the parent company. Irish Water took over responsibility generally on 1 January. The Deputy will have noted that with regard to issues such as metering, Irish Water took on responsibility for communications in July. Committee members from counties where it has commenced will know strong communication has taken place in this regard. Equally, there will be a communications strategy with regard to the company itself, and we have already put in place separate measures for local representatives which have been circulated to all local authorities. We will try to brief Deputies as much as possible and will advise them of our proposals in this regard as we go along. The service level agreement means we need a specific measure in place for local authorities and we will also need to communicate with Members of the House.