Dr. Paul McGowan:

I will take the question on water, and then I will hand over to my colleagues. We are the economic regulator for water. Essentially, therefore, we regulate Irish Water and its activities. Most importantly in that regard, we regulate how the company deals with its customers and the investment programme that it undertakes. I refer to ensuring that investment programme represents value for money for all customers, in recognition of the fact that only approximately 25% of the revenues of Irish Water come from the non-domestic sector while most of its funding comes, in essence, from the Exchequer. We do not, however, have a direct role concerning the commercial extraction of water. It is not within our remit, though, the experience internationally is that water utilities have a substantial role to play in the energy transition. Many of the facilities that water companies run have the potential to produce energy as a by-product from some of their processes.

In addition, because of the intensity of water production and wastewater treatment, water utilities potentially have a role to play on the demand side - for example, not using electricity at certain times if that is feasible. These are things we will be looking to Irish Water to initiate and develop over time. For the moment, it is probably fair to state that the real focus in terms of our economic regulation of water is bringing wastewater standards, the level of leakage and other matters up to what we would consider to be international norms from what is a relatively low base in the context of performance.