Ms Geraldine Tallon:

No, not really. It would be fairer to say that the terminology used was "external service provision". We tend to think in terms of service providers. We originally had a consultancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, examine whether a national water utility should be established. Typically Departments use consultants for specialised work. We expect that some of this kind of consultancy function would inevitably be required for the work that Bord Gáis and Irish Water was doing. We largely understand that much of this involved once-off costs for setting up the kinds of systems needed for a national operation that would last for perhaps 15 or 20 years.