Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

My next question is on water. The issue of Uisce Éireann's water charges plan has been raised. Uisce Éireann had been seeking an 18% increase. Specific to the CRU, does it do any projected modelling on potential costs of projects, for instance, the proposed Shannon water pipeline to the greater Dublin area? This will be a significant capital outlay by Uisce Éireann. Perhaps it will require Uisce Éireann to outlay that cost back on commercial customers, given that we do not have domestic water charges in this country. Potentially, we will have another children's hospital on our hands with this project. I am deeply concerned that the capital costs could run. I know some discussions have taken place with farm organisations on the land acquisition for it. There is an issue, if we look at the summer just gone, with the instability of supply. Does the CRU form an opinion on this? There is a security of supply issue and potential knock-on costs to commercial customers with a project such as this. The bigger and broader question the committee could look at is whether we should be looking at more disparate sources of water supply and, obviously, going after unaccounted-for water in Dublin as well as balanced regional development, which we all speak about, rather than continuously feeding the need for Dublin.