Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I agree entirely with my colleagues' proposal. I have been around this House for a long time and have been involved with group water schemes for many years. Can one imagine a system that tries to deliver treated water to every house in the country? It all needs to be treated and the cost of treatment is extremely high. As that water flows along the pipe, half of it is lost before it reaches the house. It is one thing to pump raw water into a house, but it is another matter altogether to pump in all the treated water with 50% of it being lost. One can see straightaway that this is out of all proportion from an economic point of view.

From an engineering point of view, there is no problem. It was possible to put water into houses 100 years ago. Let us consider what Trócaire is doing in sub-Saharan areas with the money donated from Ireland. However, successive Governments have taken their eye off the ball. It is not possible to expect a pipe laid in 1960 to be an efficient carrier of water today. Of course it will burst somewhere and that is what has happened. With pumps the pressure had to be increased dramatically, which immediately blew the pipes out of the ground.

Against that background what has been said here this evening is that we need to get an overall semi-State utility organisation so that all 34 local authorities will be singing from the same hymn sheet. In several locations there was plenty of water on the Roscommon side of the Galway border but it could not be delivered to Galway because another local authority was involved. They would not allow it to cross the border.

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