Ms Angela Ryan:

With regard to one other aspect, we have a ring-fenced small towns and villages fund of €96 million for very small communities. That is for very small areas. To double back to water main rehabilitation, leakage is obviously a network efficiency issue. It is a loss of water across the networks. The leakage interventions that give the best return are active leakage control and pressure management. Pressure management reduces pressures in the network, stopping new leaks and reducing losses from existing leaks. Active leakage control involves constantly monitoring our networks for new and emerging leaks. If a leak is allowed to run for 365 days, a great deal of water is lost. Active leakage control is about finding leaks very quickly and fixing them very quickly. That is where you get the majority of savings on leakage.

On asbestos mains, as the Deputy was saying, when they go, they tend to get longitudinal fractures and so they go quite dramatically and are repaired very quickly. The volume of water lost to leakage when large mains such as asbestos mains burst is not actually that high because we shut them off, effect a repair and get them back in service. Those leaks do not run on.

We consider the primary role of water main rehabilitation as dealing with high frequency bursts. Where levels of service are falling across communities and where there are multiple bursts ten or 15 times per year, those mains are prioritised and put on a programme for replacement for high burst frequency mains. They are put on a programme. Sometimes it can take a period of time to get through that programme but there is a priority list of sites. We record every time there is a burst and identify particular burst hot spots across the country.