Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The purpose of PLS is that before the Bill is published, the draft heads are brought before the committee. This is then a good opportunity for the members to familiarise themselves on the detail of the Bill but also to listen to different sectoral interests. The committee produces a report then, which the secretariat, unfortunately, have to beaver away at. That has then to be agreed by the committee and submitted to the Minister, who is then is expected to take it into account when he or she is finalising the legislation. One might say it is a two-meeting process.

Given we have two hours, this is technical legislation and for members who do not know, it is about creating a regime whereby water that is extracted from water tables above a certain volume is recorded so we know how much water is coming out of our water tables. It is a requirement under EU law. It is controversial for some, not for others; it is a big issue. Senator Fitzpatrick mentioned previously the Dublin water supply. One of the issues that has been delaying the pipeline project from the Parteen Weir to Dublin is that it cannot happen until this subtraction legislation is in place because it is a requirement under EU law. There are also many controversies because landowners who have private wells are nervous about the implications of it. Also, industry takes very large amounts of water out of the water tables. The purpose of this Bill is simply to know how much water is being taken out of the ground at any one time. This is a big Bill. I say to the members, and this is just from my experience, that whether they are for, against or undecided about it, pre-legislative scrutiny is very important and therefore they want to make sure they do it right. This might be one of those Bills where we do not have to be in committee because votes are not required. We could have a three-hour meeting with a half an hour break. We could have the Department witnesses in first, with many questions and answers, and then interested outside parties in a second session. That would allow us do it in one meeting but with a half an hour break if people wanted to have that.

We have three Bills coming up. We have this one, the marine planning and development management Bill, the heads of which currently run to 240 pages. It is incredibly technical. Pre-legislative scrutiny is the one chance we get to get into the meat of it before the Bill is published. We will not get through all of it in a two-hour slot.