Mr. John Barry:

When we put a budget together, we looked at the level of contingency and applied 20%, which is where the €30 million came from. Conservatively, when we looked at the figures, the estimate was that we would save an additional 15% on top of the number which was put out, amounting to €29 million. I believe that estimate is very conservative and does not cost in the risk for doing this by some other method. Additionally, there is the sum of €58 million for software licences, which we saved by going through the VEET notice and by placing our licences in a central location rather than in the 34 local authorities. At a minimum, we are looking at €28 million plus €58 million, with the latter amount spread over a five year period. What is not costed in is the cost of standing up the utility by some other method. It was mentioned earlier that the fact that the time-scales were well defined de-risked the project to an enormous extent.

The Senator asked about the set-up costs for Scottish Water. That was set up over a period of four years, from 2002 to 2006, and involved the amalgamation of three regional authorities into Scottish Water at a cost of £200 million. That is a very good comparator for what we are trying to do in 18 months, in terms of costs and the fact that we are going from 34 authorities to one.