Ms Yvonne Harris:

We recoup from the Department. The reason we ask the developer to pay upfront goes back to our earlier discussion around pre-connection inquiries and connection applications. The connection application and the commercial commitment from the developer tells Uisce Éireann that the developer is going to start development on that site, and that we should reserve capacity for the development, because the developer has commercially committed to the start of the site. If we do not look for the payment upfront, we could have multiple developers coming to us and telling us they are going to start on a site, and we have no indicator as to which developer is going to move forward with it.