Dr. Paul McGowan:

First, we welcome the establishment of the Public Water Forum and obviously we worked with the chairman, Dr. Tom Collins, on its establishment. It represents the voice of the consumer and our role in everything we do as an economic regulator is to act in the public interest. Getting that consumer voice is key to us being able to undertake our function. We provide secretariat support and funding to the Public Water Forum in its current structure. It is important to recognise that our focus in on ensuring that Irish Water delivers customer service to its customers. We set the minimum standards for that, so we must engage with consumers to understand what they should be. We also hold Irish Water to account, along with the EPA, particularly from an economic perspective in terms of its ability to deliver service quality improvements whether it is in the water or the wastewater services it delivers. That is the performance assessment framework I have spoken about on previous occasions. Finally, it is about holding Irish Water to account to deliver all of this efficiently at the minimum cost.

In all of that process we have reason to engage with consumers or consumer representative bodies at different levels of detail, be it through public consultation or hearing the voice of the consumer through the Public Water Forum. For example, we publish our documents for public consultation, so we may hear the voice of the consumer through different routes. The point is that different groups interact with us on different aspects of the work we do, at a considerable level of detail on very narrow matters or on much broader issues. We have had a consumer consultative group over the last number of years across our energy and water functions which allows non-governmental organisations, NGOs, that have a particular interest, whether it is representing people with disability, the voluntary sector or the environmental pillar, to engage with us so we can give them briefings to enable them to respond to our public consultations. We are aware of the need for a continued diversity of means by which we access the public voice. At the same time, we believe the Public Water Forum has a very important role to play in representing the voice of the consumer. Dr. Collins has alluded to a potentially wider role but that is a matter for discussion between the PWF and the Government. Under legislation our focus is on regulating Irish Water, so our engagement with the Public Water Forum is in respect of our statutory functions and the statutory functions of Irish Water.