Professor Tom Collins:

I thank the Chairman and the joint committee for the opportunity to address this meeting. I am accompanied by Ms Mindy O'Brien, who is a member of the Public Water Forum representing the environmental sector; and by Mr. Keith Hyland, who is a member of the forum representing domestic users. There are 20 representatives of domestic users and 12 representatives of sectoral groups on the Public Water Forum. The background to the structure of the forum is outlined in the documentation that has been supplied to the committee. My involvement in the water sector began in 1998, when I chaired the National Rural Water Monitoring Committee. During the ten years I spent in that role, the European Court of Justice found that the drinking water supplied by group water schemes in Ireland was defective. Members of the committee will recall that the court imposed daily fines on Ireland but ultimately did not trigger them. The monitoring committee spent ten years looking at the rural water investment programme, which involved expenditure of approximately €2 billion on rural group water schemes, which supplied approximately 500,000 members at the time.