Mr. Jerry Grant:

Irish Water is building at its core an innovation and technology component. Part of that is the consideration of sustainable solutions within the whole climate change area. Irish Water/Uisce Éireann is one of the highest energy users in the State sector, at between €70 million and €80 million a year alone, which excludes the design, build and operate, DBO, contracts.

We would have to play our part in reducing our carbon footprint and bringing down our energy costs. To do that, we need to look at research and technology opportunities in respect of the basic technologies and how efficiently they work but also, as the Senator says, introducing wetland and breed bed-type technologies. These have already been very successfully used in some parts of the country. They are somewhat dependent on the availability of relatively low-cost land and perhaps marginal land but where that is available, they are very good solutions because from our perspective, they reduce operating costs in the long term and are very good from an environmental perspective. Technology generally, research and in particular looking at energy conservation and management are very important parts of what we want to do.