Mr. Paul McGowan:

I would like to address the issue of consumption levels first of all. The analysis indicates that a one-person household consumes 66,000 litres every year. The 21,000 represents the marginal consumption that occurs when additional people are in the house. The very fact that a household exists means that there is a level of water consumption associated with that and that is the 66,000. The additional 21,000 recognises that it is marginal consumption associated with an additional adult or child. The analysis indicates that in fact the level of consumption by an adult or a child is broadly similar. That is why we have used 21,000 as the children's allowance and also as the level for each additional adult within a household. That data is based on Irish data gathered from Irish Water meters in the last 12 to 16 months.

It is the most up-to-date data available to us. As we said, we will keep this under review and require quarterly monitoring of it by Irish Water but we believe it is the best available data on water usage in Ireland.

The price of €4.88 was set based on our analysis of the cost to Irish Water of delivering water and waste water services to the domestic customer sector. We have done no analysis of the cost of providing the same services to the business sector and, thus, can offer no opinion on whether the different charges applied in different counties are correct. We publish this year a timetable for carrying out this analysis of the non-domestic tariff programme.