Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The big selling point for Irish Water was there was going to be one organisation to deal with, rather than all the local authorities. I thought that was daft because the pipes are not located in one place, but all over the country, as are the treatment systems and so on. Irish Water is an issue for all our constituency offices. There is another area in relation to taking estates in charge where, for example, the builder has gone into liquidation and the residents are trying to get all the nuts and bolts together. There are management companies that have to be wound up because the local authority will not accept a dual relationship in terms of management. People who bought a house did not think they were buying all this kind of thing. The consumer protection for people buying a home in a housing estate is pretty poor when they end up having to negotiate all this stuff. They pay local property tax and that tax cannot be spent on the housing estate because the housing estate is not in charge. The whole thing is daft.