Ms Yvonne Harris:

Absolutely. What I would say to the Senator is that we are working on our process for refunding at the moment, and it will be as efficient as Uisce Éireann can make it. We would have a difficulty if the developer does not pay us upfront, because essentially, we have no committed customer. It comes back to the reservation of the capacity. We cannot reserve capacity, and if a developer comes along and says to us that they are about to commence on the site next week, we will not have reserved the capacity for that developer. A positive pre-connection inquiry that we gave the developer in the past may not become an actual connection offer.

If the developer leaves it so late that it comes to us when it starts commencement, we could not then stand over the fact that we have capacity. The process of payment upfront is about the developer requesting that we reserve capacity and Uisce Éireann reserving that capacity for that developer. It means that if somebody else then comes up with a commencement order and applies to Uisce Éireann for that same capacity, if there is not capacity because of developer B, we have said we have the commitment from developer A. Other than that we would be in a very difficult position. It comes back to the equity challenge and the timing-----