Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy O'Dowd and Deputy Hogan for bringing forward this motion. It basically holds the Government to account for its poor response to the weather and water crisis, and calls on it to accept Fine Gael's proposal to set up a single water utility company which will be responsible for water supply and investment in this country.

The Government was clearly negligent in its extremely slow response to the weather crisis. No Minister came forward to take responsibility and speak to the media and the people or to reassure them that the situation was under control. There was, and still is, no national co-ordination plan for severe weather emergencies. This is clearly the reason the Minister's initial response was so weak. We were informed that a national plan was to be designed by the national emergency planning office several years ago to deal specifically with a severe weather crisis. However, it has been confirmed by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government that there is no such plan. To make matters worse, the Minister for Transport was away on holidays. He did not take the issue seriously and, as a result, people are very angry and disappointed with the Government.

Local authorities were unable to cope. Cities were crippled by snow and ice and the economy ground to a halt. Grit and salt were in very short supply. The Government sourced such material from outside the country rather than from quarries in this country. That bemuses me. We needed a co-ordinated response to the weather crisis but, sadly, we did not get it. The Defence Forces should have been deployed immediately, although they were in some local authorities, to help people to get out and go about their normal business. Military trucks could have been used to move people and supplies around, particularly in mountainous areas.

What Fine Gael seeks in a national plan is that it specify which routes take priority to be cleared and gritted. We need to ensure that our ports and major hospitals remain fully accessible and that transport routes are taken care of as a priority. Although we had a Government without a plan, we also had the local authorities who worked steadily on the ground. I commend the local staff of Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council in my constituency who worked extremely hard.

There is now a crisis with the water supply, which is worse for many people than the weather crisis. Some people in my constituency have their water turned off every day, without notice, explanation or warning through either the radio or the Internet. They do not know what is happening. For that reason it is crucial that the Government, as a priority, establish a single utility company to take responsibility for providing clean and safe drinking water to all residents in the State.

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