Mr. Tom Heffernan:

On the wider issue of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and Irish Water, our Secretary General wrote to the committee stating that Irish Water was set up as a commercial public company.

For this reason it is outside the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General and is subject to the normal regulatory controls, in this instance the Commission for Energy Regulation, CER. Where the Secretary General referenced oversight by this committee, he was acknowledging that substantial amounts of public money went into Irish Water during the establishment phase and accepting that it would not be unreasonable for the committee to examine those issues on an informal basis. That was essentially the-----