Mr. John Mullins:

We must achieve a clear demarcation between the local authorities and ourselves to fully determine how many we will need at the centre and at regional centres across the country, and how many will remain within the local authorities. That is a key element.

There are over 4,000 staff in the water sector in the country. That does not take into account the number of private contractors who are working in the system. On Bord Gáis Networks, for example, in the 1980s we would have had thousands working in the networks business. Many now work with contractors and, effectively, they have moved to contractors only in the past ten years. There are in the region of 550 staff working in Bord Gáis Networks to cover the totality of our Northern Ireland assets and Republic of Ireland assets. That has been enabled by the ability to put in new technologies to be more efficient in meeting those requirements. We have 13,000 km of pipeline in our networks business. In this instance, we are talking about 25,000 km of pipeline. There are significantly more assets and chemical engineering involved at a local authority level. In terms of operations, the main population of employees will remain with the local authorities. Without pinning myself to a number, we are looking at in excess of 500 and possibly fewer than 1,500. It will be a matter of where the dividing line between the local authority and Irish Water will be, particularly at a regional level.