Ms Maria Graham:

There are a couple of questions I wish to address without commenting on the policy issues which the committee is examining. Deputy Lahart talked about the experience of Scotland versus Ireland. One of the things that people have commented on is the rich information we have obtained from consumption data to understand what our level of usage is. One of those factors is that a very small proportion of people are using a huge amount of water. Whatever way one tackles that it is an issue in the long run for a system in terms of operational costs and capital investment. That is because one would be seeking in some way to try to eliminate that, whatever mechanism is used. It is important to understand that it is not a normal bell curve. In combination with other measures, there are huge outliers to be addressed in terms of leakage.

Specifically, the question was about collection charges. The collection of outstanding bills is something that was originally built into the operational costs in Irish Water's business plan so I do not have a disaggregated figure, and in the event of a return to a charging regime I am not sure whether there would be any additional costs arising, but that is something that might more appropriately be asked of Irish Water. My understanding is that in the normal course the regulator would look at Irish Water's operational costs, which would include collection of charges.

In the group water sector, as members are aware, there are two types of group water schemes. There are those who get their water from a public source and those who get it from a private source. The subsidy system recognises that. There are two levels of subsidy. The base subsidy is currently €70 per household for a connection using a public source and €140 for a connection using a private source. Additionally, a number of those on private sources have design, build, operate, DBO, contracts which are more expensive and they get a top-up of up to €220 per household. Those levels were in place before domestic water charges were introduced. They were reduced when the water charges came in and they have been restored.

In dealing with the group water sector, we have been very conscious to set out principles around fair treatment, but recognising that there is an inherent difference in structure. They have their own particular cost structures. For example, that is why we were giving them extra money for DBOs. We were also conscious of the need to have a very simple arrangement for them because one is talking about a multiplicity of group water schemes, organised very much on a co-operative basis so they would want to have low administrative costs. Because they are co-operatives, they do not want to gather a lot of personal information about their members so they tend to deal with things at a household level. Those kinds of issues would have been factored in to the way we approached them. In terms of equity and fairness, sometimes it is around the outcomes not necessarily doing the same for all people. That is why we set out principles to achieve the same outcomes for the group water sector. The sector obviously gets capital grants as well and that reduces the costs. That includes not only things to improve quality but also metering, which reduces costs, water conservation and source protection and a range of other things to assist the sector.