Professor Tom Collins:

We could find a way of capturing the median use, which might be fairer than taking average use, at an aggregated level. However, we have not found a way to conceptualise penalising, charging, sanctioning or giving an incentive for conservation in the absence of measuring the amount of usage at household level. There may be a way to do it. In Australia they imposed a swimming pool tax through the planning regulations, though not necessarily by metering, but I do not know of any way we could do it.

However, there may well be a way.

In response to the two other very quick questions that were asked by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, water bonds are used in the United States a lot. Ms O'Brien has some experience of them and will be able to address the question in more detail. They are also used by Welsh Water. We have a general point to make as a forum. The last day we met I made the point that this is a forum which does not have any designated research or technical expertise. There are many areas where we have expertise among the members but one area where we lack expertise is in the area of finance. The reinvestment requirement of Irish Water is such that the technicalities of the financial instruments that will be used are outside of our scope of expertise. Our main suggestion is that the joint Oireachtas committee might be a place that could examine the feasibility of the model and how it might be applied to Ireland, in the case of Welsh Water in particular. The water system in Wales is a public system like ours.

As a forum we did not yet have an opportunity to discuss how to apply the principle of equity and fairness, which as we say in our document we consider to be indivisible. One can ask what that means when it comes to people who have paid and those who have not paid. The forum has not discussed it but we put it on our agenda for our next meeting on 8 March. I did say we would make a written submission to the joint Oireachtas committee arising from the discussion on the question.