Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will finish by asking the witnesses to work together to ensure that the situation in Clare does not continue and that they have water as soon as possible. The onus is on everybody to work together to make that happen, including social protection if that is necessary. I acknowledge the witnesses all agree that this situation cannot continue there. We need to learn from this in terms of co-operation and collaboration between different entities to ensure that in this day and age, everybody has running water.

There are other situations in respect of group water schemes in Mayo as well. While I am here, I will mention the one in Ballycroy. I am aware of houses on the Ballycroy scheme that do not have sufficient water and that are running into a summer without it. I also acknowledge that I have worked with Mayo County Council on Downpatrick and many other schemes, such as Murrisk and as fair is fair, I wish to acknowledge the work of Mr. Condon, Ms Bourke and Mr. McDermott in particular, in trying to find solutions to all of these things. I ask Irish Water to understand the situation that local authorities are in, whether that be in terms of debt write-offs or whatever else. Let us get all of this right, as we have to right it eventually anyway. Let us not be held up by bureaucracy and red tape around this because the people in rural Ireland deserve water as much as anyone else. We need to clear up legacy issues in order for us to be able to move forward. As was referred to earlier on, we cannot have the development of towns and villages, the rural development and community development without having the water schemes. I thank our witnesses for being here today, on a Thursday afternoon. At least we will move forward from here on in. I thank the witnesses for their contributions and I apologise that I have to go to the Dáil now to speak on this issue.