Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Essentially, what the citizens' assembly has presented us with, which is no surprise, is that this is a crisis situation. It does sound like those things are quite technical and complicated. As Mr. Owens identifies, when we drill down into a particular catchment, it is difficult to say exactly where the benefits and costs lie, and the risk is that they will want to grind so fine that we will probably be analysing them still in ten years' time. I am attracted to taking a punt on some of the bigger and more obvious areas. The State can hardly lose on doing some of these things at much greater scale than we are now doing them. The question is whether we can create a framework for such a leap of faith, if one likes, so that people such as Mr. Owens can guide us to not make crass mistakes but still take the crisis seriously.