Dr. Seán Ó hÓgáin:

Its only source of water since it got its freedom in the period 1959-62 was imported water and the little bit of catchment it had. As the document notes, water dominated every government policy. Singapore then put in place what it called the "four taps", which are: first, rainwater harvesting in both protected and unprotected catchment, which is quite a revolutionary idea; second, imported water, on which it still has some dependency; third, treating its sewage to a potable water standard, which is the big one, and Singapore would be quite proud at having been able to sell to its own people the fact this treated sewage is both drinkable and useable in high-tech industry; and, fourth, desalination.

The two important points from Singapore are, first, the importance of research and development, which it went through in regard to protected and unprotected catchments and desalination, and, second, the Singaporeans saw that the full value of their changes were not going to be delivered unless the community was involved, so they decided to bring the community to the water and involve the community. Those are the two important lessons we would take from this.

The next example is Philadelphia. Singapore has not got combined sewers whereas Ireland has combined sewers where the storm water goes into the sewers. Philadelphia also has these and, when it decided to have onsite treatment, it got the community to help it put in green roofs and rainwater harvesting butts. The next slide shows how green areas were put in place to capture the rainwater and stop it going into the overloaded combined sewers.