Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a specific question for Mr. Millican first and then some questions for both witnesses. Scotland is unique in a European context in that it does not have domestic metered household charges based on consumption. To further tease out Deputy Brophy's questions, I am interested to know how much of the local authority charge goes to the water component. Is it a percentage depending on which band one is in? How is that calculated? Did it increase when Scottish Water was created or was it just that council tax bills were demarcated so that people were paying the same amount of money but knew what the portion going on water was? Has there been any difficulty with the European Commission in terms of Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive and the polluter-pays principle or is it satisfied that notwithstanding the fact that Scotland does not have a domestic metered water charge that it is meeting its other obligations through the river basin management plan and the core objectives of the directive?

My questions for both sides are very simple. We would be interested to hear the overall funding model of both Welsh Water and Scottish Water in terms of operational costs and capital programmes, in terms of revenues from domestic or commercial users and exchequer revenue vs loans, etc. I would be interested to know average household consumption in both cases and overall leakage rates in the distribution system. Here we have approximately 40% overall. Senator Clifford-Lee referred to water poverty. Do the companies track water poverty or have figures for the rates of water poverty in both Wales and Scotland?

On metering, there is a body of international research which suggests that when meters are introduced there is an initial drop in consumption before it starts to move back to its original level as people become accustomed to it. Is that something the witnesses have looked at and do they have an assessment over a period of time as to how meters changed behaviour?

My last question is to Scottish Water. We have a similar situation here in the sense that local authorities were traditionally responsible for the delivery of water services. One of the tricky issues has been the transfer or non-transfer of assets and staff from them to Irish Water. That is an experience Scotland went through. Can Mr. Millican tell us a bit about that?