Mr. Jerry Grant:

Funding is crucial in delivering a project like this. There are different opinions and projections on non-domestic use. We have reconciled these in the sense that we scaled back the strategic provision. We originally thought it would involve about 100 million l but we scaled it back to 30 million l. One wonders whether that is wise, given the opportunities. This is coupled with 1.25% growth of non-domestic usage.

Non-domestic use is well established through metering, although we are now renewing all the non-domestic meters because, as they age, they underestimate. We suspect that as we get new meters in, this might well have to be increased.

The question of water quality was raised and the idea that water can seep into the pipes. That can only happen if the pipes run out of water. This is the key point. If we eliminate outages, then the pressure in the pipes means one never gets back pressures and seepage into the pipes. There is a risk that if one has repeated outages, because there is not enough water, then there is a possibility that groundwater will get in. That is why we have chlorine residuals in the water and that is why we monitor water quality after outages carefully. The risk is that one does not have enough water to keep the system full.

There is no question that we will continue to use the Liffey, the Vartry and the groundwater sources in Monasterevin and Bog of the Ring, to the extent they are available. If there is an opportunity for local deployment of groundwater, we will absolutely continue to do that too.

On the broader question of environmental impacts, this water will be taken at the bottom of the Shannon system before it goes to the generator. It is a direct arbitrage with the ESB, just as there is at the Inniscarra and Poulaphouca plants. We believe there will be no additional environmental impact. We will have to demonstrate that to An Bord Pleanála. A significant amount of work has been done on this.

Leakage is not 57%. Leakage is 36% in the network. We talked about what it might be on the non-domestic side. It is probably 5% or 6% of total water supplied. We do everything in our power to incentivise savings around this water with householders and so forth.