Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe.

I will try to stick to the questions. Apart from asking Irish Water to reduce the call-out charge, I also ask the regulator to get it to have consideration for people on low incomes. Whatever about somebody on a reasonable income, for somebody on a low income the call-out charges of €188 or €282, depending on the time, are absolutely excessive.

I also want to ask about the first-fix situation. Why is Irish Water not yet doing this? To give a practical example, I have a constituent who had a water meter installed and after four weeks it was showing that his household had used 450,000 litres of water whereas his next-door neighbour had used 37,000 litres. He was told it would not do the fix for him so he decided to intervene himself and he dug up his path and installed a new water pipe. However, he cannot get Irish Water to connect it and he is still waiting for a connection, although that was on 22 August. Can the regulator give some direction to Irish Water at this stage to intervene on first fixes?

With regard to the issue of moving maintenance from local authorities to Irish Water, has the regulator considered getting county councils to look after the basic repairs, with Uisce Éireann looking after rolling out the new infrastructure?

Has the regulator made a decision on the amount of water people with serious illnesses are to get free? If so, can the witnesses explain that? If they do not know now, can they please ensure people know before Christmas?

Can the regulator influence Irish Water in regard to the issuing of bills? I understand these are to be issued in January although it is probably the worst month for bills as far as most people are concerned, given the shortage of money in their pockets after Christmas. It might be easier if it was moved back a month or two.

Are the PPS numbers really necessary? On a question Deputy Cowen asked in a slightly different way, is the timeline for the roll-out of Irish Water too short?