Mr. John Tierney:

Between 25 September and 31 December, we entered into 34 service level agreements with local authorities based on many months of work by the water services transition office on behalf of the local authorities and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. We also negotiated over budgets, annual service plans and what we intend to achieve. From 1 January we have been operating those service level agreements with the local authorities and we are gradually taking over the procurement function, working with eight local authorities initially and all of the capital offices. Our regional teams are preparing to work directly with local authorities on operations. We are also working directly with the capital offices to deliver the capital programme through Irish Water. In the coming year we will gradually be taking over the customer service functions from local authorities in two stages.