Mr. Paul McGowan:

I will try to answer the questions in order. Under the first-fix policy Irish Water may spend €51 million. If it spends that amount of money it is important that it is accounted for properly. It has always been our intention to analyse the first-fix policy and submit it for consultation in order to ensure that it delivers value for money for all consumers. A pilot study is currently being carried out by Irish Water on first fixes, comprising 100 first fixes. The results of that, along with its proposal on what the first-fix policy will mean, will be available to us for public consultation in the first week of November, and our intention is that the first phase of the first fix will begin in January 2015, based on what we call a partial approval. We will grant it an approval on certain terms and conditions for a certain amount of money from January 2015. We will follow that with a full and final decision on the first-fix policy. We did not come to a decision in the last day or two; we have known for some time that the first-fix policy would need to be the subject of consultation to ensure that value for money is achieved.
Irish Water submitted proposals to us in its water charges plan concerning call-out charges. We expressed concern about the level of those charges. We said that we have not approved them and we will consult on what they should be. We stated quite clearly that if anybody incurred those charges he or she would receive a rebate of any charges paid over and above what we would eventually approve. We have not signed off on any call-out charges.
.
Ms Cathy Mannion:I will add something to that. There is no link between the first-fix policy and the call-out charges, although when I first read about them in the press they seemed to go hand-in-hand. The first-fix policy is all about how Irish Water fixes a leak at no cost to the consumer. It is very different from call-out fees, which might apply when someone wants his or her pressure tested, a meter moved or something else. As Mr. McGowan said, there will be separate consultation on that, because we were concerned about the level of those costs.
We were asked whether we had benchmarked costs from elsewhere. We have done so for gas and electricity for ESB and Bord Gáis Networks. We will do the same for Irish Water. We will ask it for a lot of detail on the wage rates of the people doing the work and the number of hours required for each piece of work. It will be quite a detailed consultation. At the end of all that, we will develop a fixed rate plus a fixed number of hours as a standard charge, which will bring clarity to the situation. The costs may be more for some people than for others.