Mr. Douglas Millican:

It is really a function of history and the development of the water system through the various original regional authorities as to which communities are in the public system and which are not. For about 20 years there has been very little change, so generally those who had private supplies continue to have private supplies. Our policy approach is that we allow anybody with a private supply to connect to the public system. The support that we provide is capped at what we call the reasonable cost, which is effectively the function of the next ten to 12 years worth of revenue. Any cost in excess of that would have to be met by the householder, the customer or the community connecting onto the public system. There is no doubt that this is an area our Government is looking at as to whether there are further steps to be taken, recognising that in many cases the private water supplies do not meet the requisite EU regulations. We are working with the Drinking Water Quality Regulator in Scotland and with the Scottish Government to look at what else we could and should be doing. That work is under way at the moment, and no decisions have been made yet.