Mr. Derek Moran:

On Irish Water and the big €758 million amount that is reflected in the 2019 accounts, it is really a function of the history of Irish Water. Irish Water, as originally conceived, was supposed to be a commercial semi-State company. It had, therefore, a commercial borrowing mandate. It had approved borrowings up to a certain amount. It had exercised an amount of that. However, as we all know, EUROSTAT determined that actually it was not off-balance sheet. It was not commercial in that sense. It was on-balance sheet so what one had is them carrying debt at commercial interest rates when the State could actually replace that debt at zero or, possibly, negative interest rates. Essentially what we did is we rolled up to cope with that debt and funded it through the Exchequer.

In direct terms, it has a cost on the Exchequer side but in general government or wider accounting terms, it is neutral. We changed that level of debt for the same level of debt differently funded. One accrues a saving on the interest payments going forward. Does Mr. McCarthy think that is a reasonable summary?