Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the representatives from Irish Water. I want to put on the record my appreciation of the excellent support provided to my constituents and I by Irish Water's hotline any time I ring it. I acknowledge the support of the chief operating officer's office in terms of the issues that arose locally. They could not have been more proactive in attempting to solve them. I also thank Mr. Grant, his team and the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government for their good will and professionalism at all times.

Six months ago, I requested that we would bring Irish Water before the committee with regard to the huge crisis in the water supply in Drogheda last year. I regret that it has taken until now for Irish Water to come here and that the matter is not on the agenda today. This is wrong because there are serious lessons that must learned locally and nationally from that crisis. I regret that I do not have an opportunity to hear Irish Water's comments on that today. I listened to other members, particularly Deputy Casey who suggested that we should have a full day on it if necessary. I do not have a problem with that but leading it must be the national response of Irish Water to critical shortages, as occurred in Drogheda, and the disgraceful response for a few days - albeit over a weekend - where there was nobody in charge, nobody was accountable, the water supply was stopping and there were no tankers, no organisation and no plan. There was sweet damn all in place. I had to ring the Minister to express my concerns and in fairness to him, after that call, there was a response after two or three days and the situation improved as time went on. However, there is a serious failure in Irish Water with regard to planning for emergencies like that. I appreciate that I may not get the answer today given the way this was organised and I am not blaming anybody. I asked for it to be here and it is not. That is my point and I am not happy with that. I will not have it today but it is an urgent issue that we should discuss here. I want the lessons to be learned and iterated around the country so that it never happens again.

The second issue I want to address is the lack of transparency in Irish Water. In her opening statement, Ms Graham talked about the change in the Irish water sector and said "this places new demands on Irish Water in terms of accountability, governance and delivering value for money for taxpayers." The one word that was missing, and I am not implying it was intentional, is "transparency". I am failing to get transparency from Irish Water. It is subject to freedom of information, FOI, legislation and has one FOI request from me that is now being appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner. What I am seeking are the minutes of Irish Water's management meetings in a transparent, open and accountable way. I do not believe Irish Water is actually hiding anything. It just does not want me to know what it is up to. What is going on? Why is there opposition with Irish Water to the release of minutes of meetings of management so that we can understand what the issues around the country are? It is appalling and disgraceful. I paid €25 for an internal review and I am now paying €50 to go to the Office of the Information Commissioner. I think that is wrong. There should be and must be accountability from Irish Water but there is none. As somebody who brought in the legislation relating to Irish Water, I find it unacceptable that Irish Water is not accountable and hides from people like me who are trying to get transparency.

Another issue that is fundamental and is no surprise to anybody sitting here from the Department or Irish Water is the fact that I am concerned at the presence of Ervia at this meeting. If we want a single utility, an idea I fully support, it should be a stand-alone company - Irish Water - that has nothing to do with Ervia. Ervia has many other tasks and situations with which it must deal in other companies. It is wrong to talk about a single utility that is at the same time, controlled by another organisation. When will Ervia be separated from Irish Water? When will Irish Water become a stand-alone company because it lacks transparency, accountability, management structure and clarity so that everything that happens is straight and clear? Regarding the biggest reason things went wrong with Irish Water, when we set it up, and people here know this, we were told that the total set-up cost of consultants would be less than €20 million. That is the truth. What happened? The cost was over €200 million. The company went crazy with consultants; spent money left, right and centre; left people like me who set up the company and who fully support what is being said here today about a single utility with egg on our faces; and created trouble up and down the country. People lost their seats over this. We acted in good faith but we were told untruths. What happened was just appalling. I appreciate that I am taking up time but I must put this on the record.

The former chief executive officer of Irish Water has gone, as has the former chief executive of Ervia. Is there transparency regarding their settlement figures and whatever they received when they left the companies? Reference was made to design, build and operates, DBOs, of €100 million. One of the good opportunities I had as Minister of State was to visit a DBO. I am not sure whether some people at this meeting were there at that meeting outside Limerick. It was sold to me as a very efficient and effective means of supplying water for the city of Limerick. What is Irish Water proposing to do with that because I was told it was very efficient and very well-managed, could not be bettered in terms of its engineering and capacity and Irish Water was very happy with it? Is Irish Water going to kick all these people out and put more bureaucrats in place?

Let me return to the key point, which I acknowledge others want to make. Ervia, formerly Bord Gáis, supplies services to Irish Water. What is the cost of those services? Is there competition for them? Where is the transparency in this regard? I would like to see it. I presume I will be allowed to contribute after the responses.