Ms Margaret Attridge:

On the alarm systems, our treatment plants are alarmed so if there is non-compliance, an alarm would issue to the local authorities countrywide through the SCADA system and the message would be issued to local authority caretaking staff, perhaps to their mobile phones if it is out of hours, in order for the local authorities to respond. In the long term, the vision is that all alarms would come in to an Irish Water national system and we would have a national control centre, which would allow for management of alarms. At the moment, the alarms are managed locally.

In both of the incidents in Gorey and Ballymore Eustace, alarms did go off and the caretakers did respond. However, in the findings the EPA has informed us of so far, the main issue was the actual response post alarm, and the escalation is where the system failed.