Dr. Paul McGowan:

I appreciate that none of the questions was directly directed at the Commission for Energy Regulation but it is worth pointing out, just to pick up on Mr. Grant's point, that stable revenue is a prerequisite for a future investment programme. One of the things we do as part of our scrutiny of Irish Water is that when it puts forward its proposal for its investment programme, we ensure the efficiencies can also be achieved while delivering the outputs. That frees up additional moneys, whether it is for operational or capital investment. That is part of our function. In addition to that, we have a performance assessment framework which we have now published. We will now be working with Irish Water to gather the data so that there is visibility around Irish Water's ability to deliver against a series of ten performance metrics. Similar to what happened in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, that will demonstrate whether and how Irish Water is delivering against its obligations. The final thing to point out is that, from our assessment, Irish Water has a very significant capital investment programme in comparison to other utilities. It is carrying out a huge capital expenditure investment programme in comparison to the English and Welsh utilities, and it is probably worth noting that in the overall context here.