Mr. Jerry Grant:

There are a number of questions. I will get Mr. Gallen involved in some of the customer-related ones in particular and perhaps Ms Collins will say a few words as well on the general communications in response to Deputy Ó Broin.

Generally, in relation to the management and timing of information, there were instances for example in south Dublin where there were difficulties. Deputy Ó Broin will be very familiar with that. There were specific access issues into the higher areas in south Dublin. I will say a couple of things about that. Early on, I advised that there would be restrictions on supply which I think people interpreted as not losing supply. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would make it clear that restrictions on supply mean some people will lose supply, because that is the reality of it. In those higher areas of south Dublin that is inevitable once one starts to cut the supply and one goes up from Firhouse. That was part of it. People expected that they would have some supply. Also, when one restricts supply and it drops out, it takes time to come back and in some cases when it comes back there are air locks and such issues and then there were access difficulties.

Some crews in some parts of the country were extraordinarily busy. They really had an awful lot of work to do. Therefore, times were given to us in good faith by local authorities, which we passed on in good faith. In an emergency one is never sure that the information is accurate. I wish to make that point. To an extent, we sometimes perhaps convey the impression that we are definite but we are not always definite. It is important that we try to give the information with some level of confidence. I have no complaint to make about any crews because they did a fantastic job and they got there when they could get there. In terms of the communication from me and from others to say we were going to restrict supplies, we would have known that it means people would lose water but we did not make it quite clear. We will be clearer in the future.

In terms of emergency supplies and tankering, we started out in Staleen with very limited supplies and as a result of that we procured both tanker availability and one tonne containers we can drop into village communities. We also procured 5 l drums because we realised in Staleen that people do not have sufficiently large receptacles in their house other than pots and pans to bring home water. It is important to try to deploy those. We will build stocks of 2 l bottled water around the country and have them available in various locations.

There is no question but that people really do appreciate that help. When there is a major emergency, the Civil Defence is fantastic at taking water to people. As Deputy Mattie McGrath said, neighbours and communities get involved provided they have access to support. There is no end to the preparation one could engage in. Ms Walshe and her team continually update information and do dry runs regarding different kinds of scenarios.

The question of what happened with the water is very interesting because we had 60 million additional litres of water leaving the plants. Where was it going? One can only draw conclusions based on what happened in the subsequent days. It was clear that, on the Monday, when all the businesses reopened and the water was turned back on, many taps were clearly turned off, plumbers were busy fixing obvious leaks on private properties, and we were out picking up obvious leaks on the ground. We got back very quickly to approximately 50% of the initial leakage. Then the grind got tougher. Over the following weeks, the fixing of leaks that were showing up or were more easily detectable brought us back maybe another 15 Ml. To this day, I would say we are still 15 Ml out on what I would call a general leakage. The disappointing point is that the increase was across the board. In the 750 district meter areas across Dublin, there was a general increase across the area. One could not just say a couple of areas were in trouble - everywhere was and this was the trend across the whole country. The figure in rural areas was up 20% because of the scattered nature of connections and the fact that connections would not always be attended to, particularly those to agricultural fields and premises.