Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I will remain strictly within my two minutes. I want to deal with one point raised by the Minister in his reply, which concerns why there should be a separate body to manage water quality. The overview in the explanatory memorandum to the Bill states:

The Bill concerns itself only with the actual provision of water services. It does not seek directly to take on board wider environmental issues surrounding water resources (pollution control; water quality in its broadest sense; river basin management, etc.), although it complements the relevant legislative codes in this regard.

Far from advocating the division of physical planning from general planning in regard to water quality, I was really arguing that physical planning should be disciplined by making planners responsible to an authority that would implement the EU directives. This Bill leaves everything exactly as it is regarding responsibilities and that is a defect. I pointed out that proposals for the management of the Corrib will not be in place until 2009. I suggested that was too late.

Disastrous results will flow from the fact that local authorities, in which the Minister has total and exclusive faith, do not have capacity in terms of environmental microbiology to deliver the safety we require. Neither is it the practice of local authorities to allocate exclusively people with competence in water quality to the monitoring. These are serious defects.

In respect of the reference made by Deputy Gilmore and I to design build operate, we refer to page 21 of Professor Reeves's article, in which he refers to a monoculture of design, build and operate, the ethos of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government at present. He advocates that one should consider all procurement strategies in terms of reasonable value.

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