Mr. Michael O'Leary:

I take on board what Deputy Murphy said about language. We are bitterly disappointed with this and we fully understand the impact it has on customers, both domestic and non-domestic. The raw water which is extracted comes from the full River Liffey catchment upstream.

We are not just looking at pump stations or combined sewers. We are looking at everything that is in the catchment area, and all of that comes down as far as Leixlip. It is not just the combined sewers, misconnections or issues such as that. It is everything that is happening from the perspective of agriculture, pesticides and so on. That is what comes down, and we do sample in that regard.

The Deputy referred to the risk assessment. In its audit report the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, outlines risk assessment in the plan. However, we are very much in the space of drinking water safety plans where we do a risk assessment from source to tap, as we call it. We go right back into the catchment. That risk assessment will be part and parcel of our assessment around the need or otherwise for UV. The risk assessment has to take the catchment into account. We will then know what we have to treat in the plant, but when it leaves the plant, we also have to take the network into account and see how it is behaving.

In terms of the wet industry the Deputy referred to, whereas they were always fed solely from Leixlip, they now receive water from Ballymore Eustace as well.