Mr. Tom Leahy:

The Water Services Act 2007 was a root-and-branch reform of all water legislation going back to the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878. The local authorities were given substantial powers under the Act but not all of those powers were transferred to Uisce Éireann. One of those not transferred to Uisce Éireann was the power to deal with leakage on private property. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not talking about somebody spending another ten minutes in the shower. I am talking about clearly identified leaks where an individual domestic property is using between 50 and 200 houses' worth of water a day. These can be fixed at no cost to the customer under the first fix free scheme but, if the customer chooses not to engage and is not interested, those leaks cannot be fixed. Fixing those can often result in the go-ahead for housing developments where the reason the housing has not proceeded is the absence of headroom in the water system. These are quick fixes that are easy to implement and should be carefully considered.