Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Thank you for the detailed report you have given and we appreciate you have come up with some proposals, but the problem is that there an issue between council, Department and Irish Water. Nobody is taking responsibility for estates like the one built by Mr. Coskeran. Everyone in the Oireachtas hears daily about developments being left to become ghost estates. We have a developer here who built a small estate and everybody admitted the work was top of the range. To my mind and I am sure in the opinion of others he has been treated worse than developers who walked away and left ghost estates. There needs to be a quick resolution. I want to ask a couple of questions before I leave. Can the council explain why the Department said the decision as to whether any particular estate should be taken in charge is ultimately one for the elected members of the local authority? Yet in your opening statement you said Irish Water clarified in correspondence as early as 2014 that a local authority may not take water service infrastructure in charge without its consent. Does that not effectively show there is little understanding of the memorandum of understanding? It leads to the overall question as to who is responsible for the bind Mr. Coskeran and Rocksprings are currently in?