Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the Senator read the full article, she would understand it better.

Why was the Commission for Energy Regulation chosen? It knows nothing about water. It is an extremely inefficient regulator of electricity in that we pay 42% above the European average. Was it because Bord Gáis already had it under its thumb and we would be giving water to an already compliant regulator?

Why is Irish Water considering bonuses when it has hardly started up? Why did the people in Bord Gáis Éireann not read the CVs? Why did it spend millions of euro hiring consultants who advised banks which wrecked this country in 2008? That is a bizarre way to spend public money.

We are now talking about €150 million for start-up, €539 million for meters and €85 million consultants. Without improving the water of Ireland by one jot, we have probably spent the best part of €800 million. No cost benefit analysis was done, which we suggested. Belatedly, Irish Water, at the Committee of Public Accounts, referred to a cost benefit analysis.

The Department has been utterly economical with the truth in the way it has treated this House and the other one and that is why we need this body to be brought under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. We need Cabinet responsibility and we need this body to report to the Committee of Public Accounts. It has been a shambles all the way through. We still do not know why the Commission for Energy Regulation is regulating water. We still do not know what the price of water will be. After all the debates we have had, I think people would actually welcome the Cabinet deciding the price. We still do not know what the so-called generous free allowances will be.

A letter to the editor of The Irish Times stated that this project has turned water into gravy. It is a gravy train and it is a shameful exercise. In my time in the House, I have never had a single letter from a constituent about water, so I do not know what problem the Government was trying to solve.

Mr. Tierney said at the Oireachtas committee the Government is setting up a new organisation but it is not. My supplier is transferring from Kildare County Council to a new body which is already looking for headquarters and employs 400 in a building apparently rented from a close friend of the Taoiseach. This is a scandal and it could have been prevented if parliamentary control had been allowed, if parliamentary questions had been answered properly in the Dáil and by having a proper debate in the Seanad and by listening to the amendments we tabled.

However, I am afraid we are dealing with social welfare for engineers on a vast scale, with a non-problem and spending a load of money and not doing so in an accountable way. It really turns on its head what every one of us came in here to do in 2011, namely, to reform this country. This is old-style non-accountable waste of public money. It is an inner circle of lawyers, accountants, advisers and so on doing nothing which benefits the citizens of this country. It is a shameful episode.

Irish Water must be placed under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General, which should have been done at the outset because to date, we have wasted so much money to no effect.