Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

I propose to share time with Deputies Joe Costello and Ciarán Lynch. My sympathies are with the families and individuals affected by the water shortages and restrictions throughout the country after the extreme cold weather spell. People had different experiences throughout the country and there were different causes to the problems. I spoke to people in my area for whom the water was stopped on Christmas Day because of burst pipes in their homes. That was followed by water restrictions in the following week. Some people experienced great difficulties, especially the elderly and families with children.

I commend the work of local authorities and other agencies in attempting to fix the problems that have arisen. Many local authority workers, as the Minister mentioned, were working over the Christmas holiday period, trying to locate and fix burst pipes and mains and communicate to the public information such as the times of water restrictions. Much work went on and there has been much improvement among councils in getting the message out. This may not be the case in every local authority, but many local authorities used local and national newspapers, the broadcast media, including RTE, and Internet services such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate notices. My local authority, South Dublin County Council, regularly e-mailed local representatives with updates, which I was able to communicate to some of my constituents.

Communication is important, because if people are given plenty of notice that their water will be cut off or restricted, they can take steps to ensure they have a water supply. It is important that they are told what to do if they have no water and where they can obtain water. Much work was done in this regard. I commend the media for being more informative than I ever remember them being in the past. There were good communication channels between local authorities, the national severe weather co-ordination committee and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and most of the time there was fairly good communication with the media, which was important for people who might not have had access to the Internet. I am not saying it was perfect; there are always improvements to be made. There could have been improvements in anticipating the problems that arose. We knew the cold weather spell was coming up and the circumstances were similar to those of January last year. I am not an engineer, but perhaps it would have been possible to implement more water restrictions before the shortages occurred in order to build up a surplus in advance.

This debate is timely as it is our first day back in the Dáil, and this was the big issue over the Christmas holidays. It is good that Fine Gael tabled this motion for debate. However, something is missing from the motion: it does not call for strategic investment in our water infrastructure to rehabilitate the mains, although it calls for the reallocation of future water funding from the Exchequer to prioritise water conservation by investment in water mains weather-proofing. Unaccounted-for water is a problem not only during bad weather, but all year round, as has been identified in a number of reports, including the national water study carried out in 2000. It is one of the indicators in local government reports and is a major problem.

People often ask whether there is a scarcity of water in Ireland, but of course there is not. Compared to other countries, we do not have a water scarcity problem. We use about 1.7% of our available water resources, compared to about 37% in Belgium. Our problem is not the availability of water resources, but we do have droughts for different reasons, often to do with water management during extreme weather events. If there are more warm summers we will also have problems in that regard. However, our major problem is the loss of water through our water infrastructure, with estimated losses of up to 60% in some counties. Nationally, the proportion of water lost is probably about 40% to 50%, although I have seen some towns in which the proportion of unaccounted-for water is up to 70%. There has not been major progress in the last decade in dealing with this, although there has been investment in water conservation and infrastructural projects. According to replies from the Minister to parliamentary questions I have asked on this subject, approximately 10% of investment between 2002 and 2010 in water infrastructure - about €130 million - went towards water conservation. This is a small proportion of the capital investment in water infrastructure.

According to the document detailing the programme of investment for the next three years, which the Minister launched recently, the Government will spend €320 million on water conservation, which, as the Minister said himself, is about double what was spent in the previous eight years. If that money is spent, it will represent progress. However, we must consider the record of the Government. The fixing of our existing infrastructure was not a priority over the past ten years. This problem was flagged long ago. A report carried out in 2005 - an evaluation by consultants of investment in water infrastructure under the national development plan - made the point, to the best of my recollection, that it would make sense to fix the existing water infrastructure before investing in new capacity. However, that has not happened in the past ten years. The Minister's document makes the same point that before we start investing in new water infrastructure, we should prioritise investment in the existing infrastructure to stop leaks in the system. It is good that this has been identified, but there is much emphasis in the document on new capacity. It talks about new hubs and new towns and so on. There is a feeling that we will go back to building new houses and new towns, but we should consider the money that was spent over the past ten years. A large amount was invested in new water infrastructure and connections for houses that were never occupied.

The priority, above all other things, must be to fix the existing infrastructure. All of the other aims, such as setting up a new water authority, are far down the line. How feasible is the setting up of a water authority, and is it the right direction to go? I question whether this is an appropriate priority. I also question the prioritising of water metering. These are costly projects and we do not know whether they are feasible in the short term or even the medium term. However, we know that if we spend €26 million, as Dublin City Council did, on fixing leaking pipes and mains in the existing infrastructure, we can save a large amount of water. According to Dublin City Council, this measure saved 8 million to 10 million litres of water per day from going down the drain. That is where the money should be prioritised before we do anything else. It will provide jobs and it is the most important thing we can do.

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