Mr. John Tierney:

It is good to be here at what is a scheduled meeting. I am joined by Mr. John Barry, Mr. John Dempsey and Mr. Jerry Grant.

Water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure, more than any other type of infrastructure, determines the health of communities, protects the integrity of the environment and unlocks our potential to achieve economic prosperity. The purpose of Irish Water is to safeguard water as a precious natural resource and deliver water services in a way that meets the needs of all citizens now and into the future. In doing this, it will deliver a standardised asset management approach across 34 local authorities, drive efficiencies, improve customer service, ramp up the delivery of capital projects and raise international capital to help to deliver much needed investment in the sector.

I want to refer to our seven key messages before synopsising what is included in the paper. Ireland’s water and wastewater infrastructure does not meet the needs of a modern economy and there are significant quality, environmental and service challenges. Irish Water has been established to put the structure and systems in place to address this challenge. In 2009 the water services investment programme would have cost €6 billion to implement. The overall requirement to upgrade services has been estimated at €10 billion. Since 2009 we have invested €1.5 billion in water services infrastructure.