Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I presume the CLÁR programme is still focused on areas of low population with a lack of basic services. We are still missing one basic service. It is quite scary that 10% of people are either using private wells or taking a hose out of a stream or whatever. They might think it is good water but it is never the same as the public water supply. The Minister might tackle this issue in a number of ways, including seeing whether she could persuade the Department with responsibility for water to do it.

My belief is that every house should have broadband. I always complimented the previous Government for doing that. At times when my own party was giving out, I stood up and went public to say this is the right thing to do, so just do it, because it will be great value when it is done. It has already proven so. All we need is for it to be done faster.

Every house should have a decent road to it, which is why the LIS is absolutely vital. I am not very happy about the farmer rule in the LIS. I would have thought the first priority was to get a decent road to every house.

The third requirement is electricity in every house. Very brave people in the past have ensured this. Going back a long way, they just went and did it and said that no place is too far out for electricity. The last issue that remains is that we do not have that concept for water. There are pockets of places in my constituency, one of which has 60 houses. It will be expensive per house but in the greater budgeting, when we have it done then it is done. This could be done either by a top-up from the Minister's Department through the CLÁR scheme or the Government could go for broke and say it is time we did the national broadband scheme, but for water. In other words, we would have a national water scheme whereby a fund would be set up for a ten-year programme to connect all those areas and all those houses, whether it is four houses, 60 houses or whatever, that are not commercial for Irish Water to a proper water scheme, preferably a mains scheme. In some cases where there are very high-quality group schemes, that is the next best solution. We should do it once and for all so we can say that in this country, we have a road to every house and broadband, electricity and water, which are four basic things. Would it not be great to sign off on that as a people and say that whatever about any other country, we have achieved this basic level of service for everybody?