Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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The local authorities will have service level agreements with Irish Water regarding the services they will provide. The actual physical metering, which is what the Deputy is talking about, will be done by pre-qualified local contractors. The 25% minimum requirement that I mentioned earlier comprises the minimum of 10% who must come from the SME sector, the minimum of 10% who must come from the unemployment register and the minimum of 5% who must be apprentices, graduates or school leavers. We cannot legally insist that they must be local people, but we can insist and we are insisting that a minimum of 25% of the workforce comes from these categories.

That is part of the tendering process and the documentation.