Mr. Garrett Blaney:

I thank the Acting Chairman and members. I echo the disappointment that we did not receive the submission. It was intended that we would be able to talk to the joint committee about the full submission at this meeting. We will be happy to come back before it at any time that suits it. It is important for us to have a frank and open discussion of all the issues involved. It affects water consumers nationwide and obviously is very important. I will talk members through the first couple of slides, after which I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. McGowan, who is the lead commissioner for water services and will talk them through the rest of the slides. In this presentation we intend to cover a brief description of our broader role which does not simply cover water services but also covers energy and safety matters. Thereafter, I will hand over to Mr. McGowan who will cover water charging matters and the issues of customer protection and timelines, within which context the delays will be covered.

I will talk briefly about the Commission for Energy Regulation's broader role and note that it has been the energy regulator since late 1999-2000. We started out covering the supply of electricity and soon thereafter the supply of gas. We cover the electricity and gas networks, as well as the retail and wholesale markets in electricity and gas. We also have a broader consumer function in energy matters. In the intervening period there has been significant investment and, I hope, some stability from a regulatory point of view. We work very much in a European context on the energy side. Consequently, we have a broad economic, safety and consumer protection function in energy matters, much of which is driven by directives at European level.

We have been appointed this year as economic regulator for water services, a new function for us. However, there are some similarities and an overlap with the functions we carry out in respect of energy matters. I hope we will use and reuse some of our in-house expertise to supplement the additional staff we have available to look directly at water services.

We also have a consumer interest at our heart. I note that our strategic statement for the organisation has been refreshed recently, particularly with reference to water services being one of our new functions.

In that statement, we set out that reliable water, efficient delivery of safe water and efficient waste water is a key strategic objective from our organisation. On that note, I will hand over to Mr. Paul McGowan.