Mr. Conor O'Connell:

ESB is established a long time and has a funding model that is significantly different from Uisce Éireann. ESB has a direct fee or charge from electricity users who pay for their electricity. That is not the case with Uisce Éireann. It is a new entity. There is no doubt that there have been teething problems. I think it is fair to say that and everyone would acknowledge that we need to get to know each others business and how they operate. It is very procedural. We hear complaints about the timeframes involved. That is probably down to resources at times. The Deputy mentioned costs and capacity. Uisce Éireann recently published a capacity register of 47 settlement areas and that will certainly help. However, in most instances one will not know the capacity of the local network until one goes for a connection agreement. A connection agreement is supposed to take 16 weeks. If it is a complicated one involving many units with a sufficient capacity deficit, it will take longer than that. The cost of that are unknown until the developer gets their draft connection agreement back.