Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I accept that everybody in this room is struggling to try to keep things going. The one thing I would say to Irish Water is that things keep coming to us where local authorities are trying to do something and somewhere along the line, the relationship with Irish Water does not seem to gel at a particular time. Should it not be the case that if Irish Water is the primary decision maker in a situation such as this, the moment a project comes up the organisation should put in place a project manager to ensure that it moves as quickly and as smoothly as possible and that it is able to facilitate the local authority in respect of any questions it has or any issues that arise at local level? Also Irish Water should be able to apprise the Department of what is needed as things go along. The Department cannot be watching things like this and the local authorities are busy trying to deliver services. Irish Water's job is to oversee water in the country or at least that was my understanding. I feel that somewhere along the line, there is one key element missing and that is the overall project manager who will deal with all the different questions to get the project up and running. We are talking about it taking six months to get planning and realistically another six months to put the thing in place.