Mr. Ted O'Reilly:

Again this is covered through several policies approved by our regulator, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. In terms of where a developer is driving a need for investment, namely, where a wastewater treatment plant does not have the capacity to deal with this new load resulting from a proposed development, then there would be an upgrade requirement that is being driven by that developer. This is part of the assessment and the estimate that goes back to the developer.

If an existing upgrade is already under way when we upgrade our wastewater treatment plants, and, indeed, the same for the water side of things, we look at a time horizon of ten, 15 and 20 years, and we use the national planning framework as our guide in terms of growth rate. We engage with the planning authorities, we understand the growth aspirations through the county development plans and this is what we build to. Where the upgrade is taking place and the capacity is being realised through that upgrade, it then comes down to the planning authority, as it grants planning permissions, to in effect determine if those are within the growth targets for that settlement. It can be imagined that if we were to build a wastewater treatment plant, it would likely have a 25-year design horizon capacity available. The planning authority, typically, would not give all that capacity to one application because that would consume the total growth for that settlement over that time.