Ms Maria Graham:

I will take Deputy O'Dea's questions in order. As regards parity with the rural water sector, the subsidies would be of the order of €24 million or €25 million per annum. That relates back to our past experience when water charges were not in place.

Deputy O'Dea referred to the comments set out in page 6. To be clear, what I intended from the comments pertained to the delivery of the Irish Water business plan. If the objective is to deliver the investment and operational efficiencies in the plan, the question is how is it funded. If there are charges like other utilities, that gives the greatest range of certainty to the utility itself. It was not a commentary on a policy. It was simply saying that from a utility perspective, if most of its money is coming from its customers, it is doing the projections on customer revenue and applying it to its operations.