Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy Hogan, for bringing forward this motion. This is essentially a debate around learning lessons from the big floods and big freeze, which sums up our weather pattern for the past three months.

I am short on time and will for this reason concentrate on two specific issues, the first of which is water management. I am aware that the Minister has in recent days proposed a change in the funding model for water provision in Ireland, namely, the introduction of water charges. The Minister needs to also examine the manner in which water services and treatment is delivered. We must never again allow a situation whereby half the population of a city the size of Cork is left without water for ten days. Between 16,000 and 20,000 households had no water for ten days because there was no back-up supply or no way of connecting to Cork County Council's water supply network. We must now consider the establishment of a single water authority or, Fine Gael's preference, a single water company to manage and deliver the infrastructure that is necessary to provide clean drinking water as cost effectively as possible. We spend €1.2 billion per annum on the provision of water to our population, some 50% of which is wasted by way of leakage through pipes before it reaches its destination. To quantify it in monetary terms, we are wasting hundreds of millions of euro of taxpayers money that could better be spent elsewhere because we have not put in place the type of infrastructure necessary to deliver water efficiently.

It is not good enough to simply change the manner in which we fund an inefficient way of delivering water. We must also change the structure and use local authorities as agents for delivery. We must give one authority or company the responsibility of delivering a comprehensive system for the entire country rather than have 34 local authorities doing their own thing in their own regions while dependant on the budget available to them in any particular year.

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