Mr. Eamon Gallen:

I take the Senator's point. We have all this information on our website and we should have been more proactive in getting it out to customers. We will certainly look at doing that. In addition to the piece about storing up water, there was an education piece about people leaving taps running which caused us many difficulties. It was taking water out of the reservoirs to very little benefit. When it takes it out, it takes a long time to recharge and there are many knock-on consequences.

We are lucky in Ireland that the majority of premises have 24-hour storage in their tanks. Paris and many places in the UK, for example, do not, meaning they are cut off immediately. At least for 24 hours, while we are trying to repair the service, people should have some water.

If we had given out the message about running taps in advance, it might have averted some of the problems. Storage of water, particularly for vulnerable customers, is important. In many cases, by the time we got in touch with a vulnerable customer, either a family member or neighbour had supplied water. It would be much safer for everybody if they had the water in advance. We will take that on board and examine it.