Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

That is in line with the EU directive on the promotion of electricity production from renewable energy resources and our aim to increase the total capacity of renewable energy technologies to 1,450 MW.

Responsibility for water services lies with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and work is ongoing in this area by the cross-departmental team. In particular, it considered the need for a continuing expansion of water supply and waste water infrastructure and a strategy is being pursued to ensure capacity is put in place to facilitate economic development and housing construction to respond to population growth. The necessary funding will be provided under the national development plan to build on the major improvement in recent years in the quality and scale of the water services infrastructure. This improvement has provided crucial support in all sectors of the economy.

An enormous amount of capital investment is going into this area, not only in terms of the major projects that have been completed in Dublin, Cork and Limerick but also in about 100 other developments throughout the State where work is taking place this year. In addition, many other projects are being planned and approved for development in the next year or two.

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