Ms Maria Graham:

In terms of European Law, I do not believe there is anything because the European Commission has said that the ownership and delivery of water infrastructure and services is a matter for the individual member states. In terms of Irish law, one of the concerns relates to practical issues. Irish Water is responsible, statutorily, for the delivery of public water services and through service level agreements with local authorities is operating the system and controlling the assets. There is a process under way of transferring those assets and when we went into the detail of doing that, it was not as straightforward as we had thought in terms of ownership. That is at another level, as the Deputy will appreciate, in terms of what is on folios and so forth. If, for example, a local authority had built a wastewater treatment plant, it may have, as part of its engagement with the community, made land available for football pitches or allotments. A process had to be put in place to answer the question of what is the public asset and what is the local authority asset. It is in the detail -----