Ms Maria Graham:

If I can reflect in a general way on some of the points. The water services legislation of 2007 was approximately ten years in gestation, and it was considered serious enough at that point to put protections in against the privatisation of assets, before Irish Water was contemplated. That was an important point at that stage.

When we moved into the reform process, PricewaterhouseCoopers was specifically asked to report on the use of State utilities. Because of the time available to us under the agreement with the troika to establish the new utility, we were given a series of points which would have to be satisfied were we to have it under an existing utility such as Bord Gáis.

I have been involved in the water sector since 2009. I think I attended all of the meetings with the troika and the issue of privatisation was not raised. The Department only looked at the models included in the PricewaterhouseCoopers report such as the local authority agency model, among others. The question of privatisation or preparing for it was never on our agenda, pre or post-Irish Water.