Mr. Des Joyce:

There have been problems in Dundalk with regard to manganese. As I have said earlier, manganese is one of those things that seem to come very quickly out of nowhere. If the plant is not designed to deal with it, it can be difficult to treat. There are two sides to it. One is the treatment of it and then the manganese gets into the network and it has to be cleaned and all the rest. Due to the type of treatment process we have in the plant, we have no discharge there so we recirculate through the head of the works, which makes it a little more difficult. We are working on a solution there at the moment and are hoping to commence works there.

It is probably a fairly significant amount of work so it could take a number of years to complete that investment in the plant. It is a large plant and it takes time to carry out upgrades to those types of plants. Unfortunately, there is no way around that. At the moment, the monitoring of the water is carried out by Uisce Éireann, the HSE and others. We will be consulting to make sure we stay within safe limits for manganese.