Mr. John Condon:

The application we are processing is an application for a community water connection. Traditionally, people formed group schemes to bring water supplies to communities in rural areas. A group scheme is like a company or committee. It is set up. It is a legal entity with its own bank accounts and must do all the things that are done to maintain an entity such as a company. In the multi-annual rural water programme that was brought in some years ago, a new category was brought in - community water connections.

This would be where a relatively small community, such as we have in this case, could come together and have the pipes built that would receive the source. The water would mainly be from the public supply, namely, from Uisce Éireann. This was applied for in July 2018. Prior to that, in 2012, some of the members of the community applied to set up a group water scheme. They did not make much progress with it, so they withdrew that application in 2018 and came in under the new measure, which is probably more suitable for them than the old one.

To put things in context, in County Mayo, we operate 200 group water schemes that serve a population of 40,000 people. We are talking here about 21 to 24 houses, depending on how we count them, which is very small compared to some of the other schemes we have. The other point that might be made known is that in 2018 we received five applications for community water connections. One of them is completed, one under construction, one has been withdrawn and one is not as advanced as the Cleragh community water connection. There are all sorts of reasons for this, including trying to get consultants to design them and contractors to build them and everything else. It is not easy in the present climate.

The second question Deputy Conway-Walsh asked concerned where we would be if there had not been a need to upgrade the plant. The answer is we would be much further advanced and might even be finished. This is not a criticism of anybody, but it was identified back in 2021 that the plant needed to be upgraded for this to happen. That work has now been done. It concluded at the end of last year and this meant it was not realistic to proceed with a formal connection until the end of last year. We made the formal connection in November 2023. Time would have been lost in this regard. Finding the time for the Natura impact assessment, the river crossing aspect and the planning in this regard was done during this time. It would not have taken that long to do it. I do not know if we can say exactly how long it would have taken, but this was not the main thing, however. The need to have the plant upgraded was the main factor in where we are now.