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

I thank the witnesses for coming in. Creidim go bhfuil an cruinniú seo thar a bheith tábhachtach. Tá go leor le plé. I will concentrate in the first part of my questioning on the provision of ordinary services to ordinary dwellers in rural Ireland. I will make a few general comments. First, we have a large number of rural areas with declining populations. The CLÁR areas were defined as those which had lost 30% of their population since 1926. The population of the State has gone up enormously since then but there are areas losing population. I do not think the present census shows any massive bounceback. Much of the problem is structural. Second, because we all operate in silos and EU rules and whatever, there are not up-to-date mechanisms in place - and I will come back to how they might be put in place if we can get the information - to rebalance the affordability of living and building in rural Ireland. I believe the State is meant to be disruptive when the market fails. I do not believe in market forces on their own. Of course, the State does not either because we interfere with everything, if we see a need. Sometimes we have more hang-ups than at other times. The idea of the CLÁR and special islands capital programmes was to be disruptive. The big enemy of infrastructure in rural Ireland is the cost-benefit analysis. You will always find somewhere with a better cost-benefit analysis than an island, a lowly populated small rural village or a one-off house.

I often notice when I return to Dublin, where I grew up, that there is continuous massive investment in urban areas in water and wastewater. Look at the investment in Poolbeg since I grew up again and again and more to follow, and rightly so. I have no problem with that. Every house that will ever feed into that will gain from it but there is no cost to them. The State foots the bill when the main pipes are extended. This is pertinent to what I am going to say.

On the other hand, the communities I am referring to have capacity in schools - something that is scarce at the moment - space, capacity in the health and community services and capacity in sporting and community facilities. All they are screaming out for are people to use those fantastic facilities. With that in mind, I have a number of specific questions, but it is important to understand where I am coming from.

If I am building a new rural house, will ESB Networks outline how it charges for the electricity connection to that house? In particular, how does it charge for distance from the nearest pole or wherever the relevant connection point is, from ESB Networks' point of view? Is it the transformer or the pole, or does it combine the whole lot to get a price?

Is it the full economic cost that is charged or is some element of cross-subsidy built into that?

I have the same question for Irish Water. My understanding is that Irish Water charges the full economic cost from the point that the Uisce Éireann supply ends to the proposed end of the council road. It might be asked why I said "council road", but this is important. In rural Ireland, in some cases, we are getting house connections that are allowed put the pipe under the non-council road, but where it is a council road, it has to be done by Uisce Éireann at a cost of, I understand, €300 per metre. There is then a €2,500 or €3,000 fixed charge. The Uisce Éireann representatives might outline the scale of charges, but to put that into scale, €300 a metre gives you 3 x 104, which by my calculation is €30,000 for 100 m. Again, is any subsidy involved or is Uisce Éireann paying the whole economic cost, even though it is putting in public infrastructure that is under a public road?

Will the CRU outline how it assesses what it should cost ESB Networks to put in an electricity supply and what it costs Irish Water or Uisce Éireann to do the same thing? Particularly in the case of Uisce Éireann, all the local contractors tell us they could do it a lot cheaper to the same required standard. As somebody who has been directly and indirectly involved in many group water schemes, they were done to standard and have operated perfectly since we did them. It seems, not only to me but to people a lot more knowledgeable than me, that an exorbitant cost was arrived at. My final question for CRU on this module is whether it is legal for the Government to decide, as it effectively does in urban areas, to subsidise by direct State grant the provision of these rural infrastructures.

I have many more questions and issues I wish to raise, but I ask the Chair to take that group together.