Ms Laura Burke:

When the merger was being considered back in 2010, one point that was identified at that time was that there was no duplication of work between the EPA and the RPII and significant savings were not identified, so I should say that upfront. However, what I would say is that in the context of the merger, we have identified a number of opportunities through simple things, such as having only one receptionist in the Dublin campus, rather than the two receptionists that we would have had, which is a saving in itself. On the water and laboratories side of things, we now have one manager for the water and radiation laboratories in the Dublin office, whereas there would have been more than that, at least two. We also now have a single multi-site accreditation for our laboratories, which is also an efficiency and an economy of scale. The water and radiation laboratories have come together. There have been a number of efficiencies in those and the other aspect that was identified by a peer review of Ireland's response to radiological emergencies was that the RPII itself was based in Dublin and did not have a regional presence, whereas we are now using our laboratories across the country to be able to provide an emergency response to and be prepared for a radiological issue. Staff in the laboratories are now trained to do some of that monitoring as well, so that is providing an additional service at no additional cost to the State.