Mr. Eamon Gallen:

I will deal briefly with the EPA. Mr. O'Leary will deal with the investment and also the WRC. I will deal with the rest and if I miss anything, we will try to pick it up.

Without getting into the detail of the figures - Mr. O'Leary will cover that on the EPA side - in some of the statistics the Deputy is saying that we are going down and then coming back up. If I use the example of the dirty 44 with which people would be familiar - the untreated agglomerations where we were discharging untreated effluent into watercourses and into the sea - standards have risen, more get caught in the net and there are more audits, etc. It started at 44 cases, went up to 50 in total and is now down at 37. As I stated earlier, we plan to have most of those off by 2021. There will be some that will probably take a little bit longer but they will be well under way by 2021. What happens is one starts at 44, standards go up, more fall under the bar and are added to the list, or there are more intensive audits, but overall we have come from 50 down to 37. We will get another two next year and substantially more by 2021. Mr. O'Leary will deal with some of the specifics around the investment.

With regard to the eastern midlands water supply project, Deputy Ó Broin is absolutely right. Besides anything else, it is a difficult message to sell that we will take it from the Shannon, bring it up to Dublin and put it into Dublin's foundations. We are working hard on the leakage side to get leakage down. Leakage reduction alone will not solve this problem for us but we have €500 million set aside nationally between now and 2021 to get leakage down. Our target is 166 million l a day, 44 million l a day of which will be in Dublin, which will make a significant difference but will not get us down as far as we need to get. At present - these figures fluctuate, seasonally and otherwise - we are at 45% leakage nationally and 35% in Dublin. It is still an awful lot of water. Considering we produce 600 million l a day, 200 million l leaking is an awful lot of water. We absolutely have to get that down.

On the broader point of the need for the water supply project, if one takes the fact that 85% of Dublin's water, which is 45% of the Liffey's flow, is one source, besides anything else one needs a security of supply solution there. In addition, it is likely, at 45%, that that is not sustainable long-term. Aside from the fact of the pure supply, we have issues around security of supply and resilience for the capital city and, indeed, the midlands region, which will take 30% of the water.

With regard to aquifers, we are actively looking at alternative sources of water all the time. We are intensifying that at present because if the water supply project is delayed for whatever reasons, and there are many reasons it could be delayed, we will have to keep water going into Dublin. We are actively looking for alternative sources, not least because if some water-intensive industries came into the country they would need water immediately and we have to be able to supply them. In answer to that question, we are doing that all the time and we have recently intensified that. We are about to embark on a multi-million euro programme, specifically down towards the Meath and south Dublin area, to try to see if there is more water available. We will continue with that.

I will hand over to Mr. O'Leary.