Imelda Mannion

So it does give this plan a much stronger chance of actually being delivered.

It has.

You know, looking across those EU regulations, we're still bound by all of those.

And what we are trying to do, essentially, which is similar to the EU simplification process itself, is challenge how appropriately they are applied in an Irish context.

Why are we doing some of the things we are doing?

Looking at how we've interpreted some of the EU regulations, which are unnecessary or disproportionate.

And I'll give you another example, Joe, that came up through the process itself and the task force.

You know, around the year 2000, the EIA directive came in where a water company, if they were building a plant servicing up to 150,000 population equivalent, didn't need an EIA.

or they could serve up to 150,000 population equivalent before they needed an EIA.

In Ireland, for some reason that nobody can actually confirm, about 25 years ago, we changed that threshold to 10,000 population equivalent.

Immensely.

So there's gold plating across our whole system and there's also a necessary duplication of process.

And what we're trying to do is look at where we can do that better, where we can do things in a much simpler, smarter way to make the system quicker, to remove that duplication and just to be more joined up.

We want to just simply implement a common sense and practical approach without, absolutely without compromising the safeguards, but just to ensure that we can bring that speed back into the system.

It's hugely important to receive that endorsement.

And I think, you know, facing into the next stage of implementation, which is really the most critical stage, it's important to have that support and that industry voice behind the urgency to implement.

now implement and get on with the delivery of these actions as quickly as the ambition that we've set out within the plan.

We will.

And I really hope that we will.

You know, what does success look like?