Ms Laura Burke:

Yes. We have no role with regard to setting water policy, water charging, metering or related matters, so I will leave that debate to others. On Senator Coffey's questions with regard to Irish Water and capital investment, we are focused on the delivery of safe and secure water and ultimately the protection of the environment from wastewater impacts. That is what we focus on. Our assessment of Irish Water is based on the achievement and delivery of those objectives. It is very straightforward. During the period 2014 to 2017 the EPA's remedial action list dropped below 100 supplies for the first time, and the number of people on boil water notices is now less than 5,000. We also have national strategies in place to deal with key issues such as lead, trihalomethanes and pesticides. Our assessment of Irish Water's plan suggests that all schemes on the current remedial action list will be removed by the end of 2020, with many scheduled for completion within the next two years. That covers the drinking water side of things.

With regard to wastewater, the news is less encouraging. We have not seen the same level of improvements and performance, and we are seeing increasing delays to the reported completion dates of projects such as the elimination of discharges of raw sewage from 43 identified sites. Many of those schemes are now two years behind the original planned dates. This is not new - it was in our annual report on wastewater. We have also said that Irish Water needs a greater focus on improving operational effectiveness of its existing infrastructure, but there also must be an acceleration of investment in new infrastructure for both drinking water and wastewater treatment. I should highlight to the committee that the EPA has been raising this since 2006, so it is not a new message. The state of the infrastructure has been identified by us in many reports over the years. My colleague, Gerard O'Leary, might talk about the specific points of the ambitions of the plan out to 2021.