Ms Margaret Attridge:

On the question of keeping people informed, we have been constantly working on improving our communication with customers this year. I refer to everything from media work to leaflet drops, customer callbacks and so on. We really want to keep customers informed of what is going on in Cork city.

With regard to the timeframe, we hope that our actions this year will make a significant difference to the people of Cork by the end of the year. We are undertaking an extensive flushing programme and making some minor investments in the treatment process in Cork city, which we hope will treat the water chemistry. That will have a positive impact. We hope to have that infrastructure in place by the end of the year.

I will now address the more long-term replacement of cast-iron water mains in Cork.

The information we are gathering now is allowing us to identify the worst areas in Cork and prioritise those for mains rehabilitation. As we go into the particular district metered areas such as Douglas and Gurranabraher, we are finding out more and more about the condition of the assets in those areas and then reprioritising sections of mains where we are discovering issues. We are finding lengths of mains that were supposed to be decommissioned many years ago but that are actually still live dead ends in absolutely terrible condition. Therefore, we have a lot of work. As we are going into areas, we are discovering these. We need to come back and shut those down and get them out of commission because they are adding to the problem due to their age and what has happened over many years in Cork city. There are more than 300 km of cast-iron mains in Cork city. It will take many years of investment cycles to replace those mains. We have replaced 20 km in recent years. This year alone, we have probably replaced up to 5 km of mains in Cork city. That is with the increased focus it is getting. It will take many years of investment cycles to replace all the cast-iron mains in Cork city.