I return to the water issue. I ask the Minister to revisit the decision not to provide tankers. Some 600,000 people are affected, including many low-income families and elderly people. These people need water and cannot afford to buy bottled water. Has the Minister not met representatives of Irish Water face to face? I cannot get my head around the fact that this fault was identified on Monday evening and yet it took 24 hours for an alert to issue. They clearly were not ready for the impact of that alert. Has the Minister not met representatives of Irish Water? When was he informed about the fault?

This is a major inconvenience for hundreds of thousands of people. A precautionary notice has been issued. The treatment process had begun on a portion of the water that went into a very large system but had not been completed. We believe the boil water notice is temporary. I will talk through the temporariness we hope to see. The testing is under way. The HSE needs to get three clear tests over a 72-hour period. We hope that will conclude before the weekend. Provided everything goes well, we hope we will be able to take the vast majority of people off that boil water notice before the bank holiday weekend. A greatly reduced number of households might continue to be subject to a boil water notice over the weekend, but that remains to be seen and depends on the testing.

I have requested a special report on it from the EPA. The EPA does not report to me, but in this exceptional circumstance, it will report to me directly on this following its investigation, which is under way. We do not need to provide water tankers because it is a boil water notice; people can boil their water before they use it as a precautionary measure.

So that is fine.

We estimate that at this stage less than 15% of the water in the system in the area concerned might be affected, but we do not know where it is because of how the system works.

That is not very reassuring for 600,000 people.

We issued the boil water notice because of a health concern. We want to ensure people know that their drinking water is safe and clean.

Has the Minister met representatives of Irish Water?

I will come to that in a moment.

In this instance we cannot be sure of that. Because we cannot be sure, as a precautionary measure on the advice of the HSE, we have issued a boil water notice to these households.

As it happens, my senior team and I met Irish Water's senior management team on Monday to discuss a whole host of issues such as monitoring systems, capital investment plans, etc., before this was identified. It was part of a regular engagement I have with Irish Water to ensure we know exactly what is happening across the operation of the agency.

Did they tell the Minister on Monday evening?

Was the Minister told on Monday?

I have been in constant contact with Irish Water.

Did they tell the Minister on Monday evening?

My officials have been in constant contact with Irish Water, the HSE and the local authorities-----

Was the Minister told on Monday?

Did they tell the Minister on Monday evening?

We cannot have a lengthy debate on the matter.

I was informed by my officials-----

When? Was it on Monday?

-----as soon as they were informed by Irish Water.

When?

Since then we have put in place the plans to notify the public, which is most important part here.

When was that? Was it on Monday? The Minister will not say. It took 24 hours to issue the notice.