Mr. Jerry Grant:

The biggest question, and the one I want to address first is why now, and why the 12-year service level agreements are being reviewed as being no longer optimal for the service. In 2012 and 2013 the focus was on transition and stability. Local knowledge and all of those benefits were recognised. I acknowledge again, as Mr. Quinn did in his opening statement, that the service level agreement has provided a seamless transition of service. It has allowed us to deliver significant benefits nationally in terms of investment and operation, and there is no question about this. It has allowed us to do all of this without a single day lost to industrial relations. This is a tribute to the staff, the unions and management of Irish Water and local authorities. What we are recognising, and what has been set out in our submission, is we have a real challenge to bring our costs into line with the benchmark costs of a similar utility. If we continue as we are and we sacrifice the €70 million a year saving potential which is there it is €70 million less to invest. This is a significant part of our overall plan. At the same time, in terms of standard operating procedures, we have different operating procedures throughout the country. With regard to how we can respond on customer services, or how we can address national issues such as leakage on a regional basis or the operation of modern wastewater plans, we simply cannot have centres of excellence in every local authority area. It is not possible or cost effective to do this and there are not enough people to do so. It is all about equity of service throughout the country. There has to be accountability to the management of Irish Water, which has full responsibility. We have absolutely all of the responsibility and we accept all of the responsibility. This has to be matched with accountability.

With regard to local knowledge, in 2013 and 2014 it was important. Over the past four years we have built information systems that capture this information into geographic information systems and our workflow systems. We are now in a very strong position in terms of objective data on many other assets. The trouble with local knowledge is sometimes it is not correct and it cannot be verified. This is not the basis on which a national utility can be run or on which investment decisions made.

The Senator mentioned a number of specific items, including the concerns of staff. At this point we are at the very outset of this process. We believe many staff in local authorities would welcome the opportunity to come into the utility because it offers the opportunity for a water services sector and a place where they can develop their career and expand it. We believe that when we can get out and talk in detail about the benefits of working for the utility, better working conditions, safer working conditions, upskilling and apprenticeship we will have an awful lot to offer that will be very attractive to the committed staff in local authorities to work for us. However, this is a process that involves serious engagement and we want to engage on it. Before we get to that point we must go through processes, and we are working through certain principles at the top level to get to that point.

Specifically on backyard services, which is the issue the Senator has raised, it is an issue we have been addressing since day one. Today is no different to when the local authorities were in charge. Backyard services are private services. They are private drains and not public sewers. They present enormous difficulties. If they were handed over to us tomorrow morning we would need tens of millions of euro and crews of people specifically to deal with them. In the vast majority of cases these issues can be addressed by the residents themselves by simply clearing blockages. Of course, there is the question of being responsible about what goes down the sewer. Since the issue arose in 2014, we have been back to local authorities to ask them please to continue doing what they always did. I believe we have responded where there is a public health issue or where there are elderly or vulnerable people, and we will always do so. My ask of local authority operational staff is that they always respond and fix the problem if they can, but it is on the basis we respond in this way recognising that private drains are the responsibility of householders. I hope we have improved on this point considerably.

With regard to the call-out, what the Senator reported was a Joe Duffy conversation and, frankly, he got it completely wrong, as very often happens on Joe Duffy. We provided a free-----