Mr. John Mullins:

I shall try to deal with the Deputy's questions in the order in which they were put. I thank him for his commentary. Our estimation is on the basis of 1.05 million meters. We are taking a view on the number that will remain assessed. I understand the point that people are on public mains but are not covered by wastewater treatment in various locations across the country. We have tried to take that into our estimation as well. We have made soundings on the costs based on existing contractor arrangements. We have also spoken to meter manufacturers and boundary box providers as well.

Effectively, what we have done is a sum of the parts, with some contingency applied. I reiterate that I would like to be in a better position, whereby we would have done all the tenders and come back on a cost per meter basis. However, until we have the tenders completed, which will be in the spring, there may be an opportunity to come back and look at those numbers in better detail.

On the issue of timing, we are looking at a programme that will last until 2016 and be very aggressive. The whole county of Westmeath will be covered every month for 30 months, which involves a lot of construction. If one considers the scale and size of Westmeath and the covering of that in one month, it is a significant undertaking. We will have to repeat that process for 30 months right across the country. The rate at which we propose to do this is actually double the rate Thames Water in London is doing at this time. That company has a much bigger security of supply issue than we have in the east coast of Ireland. Does Mr. O'Donoghue wish to comment on the use of personally owned meters? Deputy Stanley referred to his.