Mr. Jerry Grant:

There will be a cash spend on these projects. For example, Ringsend will go on for at least another year or maybe two years. The cash tends to come behind the project, so we are projecting the cash as well as the build-out cost. We will have a number of schemes that will run beyond 2021, but we expect to be compliant in Ringsend by 2021. The best thing for us to do is to set it out year-on-year and provide that to the committee.

I want to start at the end by agreeing with Ms Rooney on the commercial tariffs but also on the connection charges. We will be making a proposal on connection charges earlier than that, in the coming months, because there is a programme on that. We think it is extremely important because we have a huge variety of charges across the country, so this will bring about a standard set of connection charges. It will go through the same process of submission and consultation that Ms Rooney outlined. It will certainly regularise that.

I will now pick up on the questions. There are plans in place for all the priority sites. If one takes, for example, the 44 that had no treatment, they had to start with feasibility studies. We appointed consultant engineers to put them together. We put them out in bundles of five to ten so we could get a much quicker delivery of solutions. We have a number of constraints and the supply chain is part of the issue as well. We plan on putting out some of that work to what we call early contractor involvement. In other words, we will put it out early and get the contractors to support the design, or offer design solutions, and then go for planning on the basis of those solutions in the hope of fast-tracking delivery. We expect to be letting contracts with five to ten schemes in a single contract, as part of the future supply chain management approach. That is very different from what we have been doing up to now where, by and large, we have been tendering individual projects. We are in the process of engaging with the contracting industry around how that will happen, as well as looking at the contracts arrangement and models for all that.

As regards the question of money, I would not suggest for a minute that we would not take all the money we could get. However, given the time it takes to get projects through, one needs to look at the profiling. The real challenge for this country will be to sustain the level of funding and keep the graph going up, and keep the plans and programmes behind that. There are limitations on the supply chain and even on the planning system as to how many projects one can take through at a time. Nevertheless we are actively trying to spend as much money as we can on doing the right things.

If one turns on the tap and then turns it off again that will ruin value. One can really destroy value and delivery by doing that. Therefore, one has to plan capital delivery in order to make it efficient. That is where the regulatory model as applied to utilities in other countries has demonstrated value. By having that sort of programmed approach, one can do things such as clustering projects, having early contractual involvement, and supply chain relationship management approaches. With the money and a five-year certainty, one can do those kinds of things. If there is any doubt about that, one is unlikely to get value, efficiency and timeliness of delivery.

Surface water is an interesting and challenging issue. I will take the example of Cork city but it can be applied to most urban areas. In Cork city we have a modern treatment system which treats to a very high standard and a lot of money was put into collecting all the foul sewers. What we have in the centre of Cork in the Lee Estuary is the discharge out of sewage whenever it rains and we take in saltwater on high tides, which wrecks or complicates the treatment process. To address and figure out what the problem is and its scale, we have to spend a number of millions of euro on CCTV cameras, surveys and models to investigate where it is coming from because we are speaking not about pipe sewers but old stone culverts and brick culverts. It is a very big problem. It is likely to result in probably tens of millions and maybe hundreds of millions of investment in a city such as Cork . In Dublin it will be similar. Throughout the country it will involve huge investment in the period beyond 2021, and for the next 20 years in fact.

This is a great example of something we cannot solve today with money because we do not know what the answer is. We do not even know what the problem is. What we are trying to do is build these models that will define the rainfall response and track back through CCTV and investigation. We will end up relining a lot of the culverts using glass-reinforced plastic, GRP, liners and so on. It would be really helpful if we could remove stormwater altogether because it adds costs and complications to the treatment process. In central town areas it is extremely difficult to do and, frankly, it would be very disruptive if we had to try to separate out the pipes.

There is also a missed connection issue because we have foul sewers going into storm sewers. The resolution of this type of issue will take years. Such issues have an impact, which is why Thurles and Roscrea networks will take a little bit longer because we are preparing the surveys that will lead to the works. It will just take that bit longer. If we went in and tried to solve it now without the information we would waste money and we probably would not get the answer or the right result.

As for Arklow, we have a number of schemes and I will not go into specifics. Certainly, if we look back over the past 20 years a number of schemes stopped dead in their tracks because of objections. An Bord Pleanála and the strategic infrastructure Act have streamlined the process a bit but recourse to the courts and to Europe is something to which citizens are entitled.