Mr. Brian MacDonald:

On the specifics, we reckon that about half the leakage on any distribution main was found on the consumer side of the connection. It was not quite half in some cases and more in others. The level was pretty high in some schemes, and there was very high usage. As members will see from the submission from the federation, there is a lot more pipework in a group water scheme per household than there is for households under Irish Water. Therefore, the measure was essential. Obviously, the bulk meter did a significant job in identifying sections of main posing a problem. The tendency in the local group scheme was to believe the system was leaking like a sieve, leading to the view that the pipework should be replaced. Replacing the pipework would not have actually solved the problem because most of the loss was not in the pipe at all but on the consumer side of the connection. We could not have identified that without the individual meters. That explains what we very much tend to favour. At a number of seminars we had recently, we asked group scheme administrators which of all the technological advances of recent years has been most significant. Without exception, they replied it was the introduction of individual metering.