Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Tuffy for sharing her time with me, and compliment Fine Gael on its motion on public utilities and the effect of the recent severe weather on the provision of an adequate water supply to householders and businesses.

As the leader of the Green Party, the Minister should be the first to recognise the reality of climate change. We must recognise that what we have been reliably told by the local authorities happens only once every 50 or 100 years, is now happening here regularly. In recent years, we have had flooding, in addition to the snow and icy conditions this Christmas and last January. We have also seen the extreme flooding that is occurring in Australia.

Ireland has now begun to get weather extremes, but this has not been recognised in terms of how to deal with them. All we have currently is a national emergency co-ordinating committee but we should realise that this is not just an emergency situation as such events are occurring regularly. Severe weather conditions will now be regular events in this country, as has been happening over the last couple of years. The sooner we put in place a proper national plan to deal with such conditions the better. We need more than a national emergency co-ordinating committee that sits around the Christmas period; it must be put in place on a long-term basis with proper policies and plans to co-ordinate the activities of local authorities.

Following what happened last year, the Minister for Transport put the National Roads Authority in charge of salt. Unfortunately, however, the NRA did not get its act together very well. It brought salt into Cork when Donegal was snowed in for four weeks. Salt supplies had to be driven across the entire country from Cork to Donegal and, in addition, it arrived late because of storms in the Mediterranean. It was a horrendous situation. Local authorities did their best to access salt supplies but could not because the NRA was trying to get its hands on everything available. Local authorities that showed initiative could not get grit or salt because the NRA was endeavouring to control the entire supply. That is not good enough in a situation involving multiple problems arising from severe weather conditions.

It is a shame that the lessons of January 2010 were not learned. The Ministers for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Transport and Defence attended the Dáil at that time to explain what was being done, but they did not get their act together. It is shame that the Minister, Deputy Gormley, was not available. Indeed, no Minister was available until long after the event when things seemed to look up. Fresh snow falls and icy conditions, however, caused matters to deteriorate.

Even at the present time, we have not solved the problem by any means. There is a huge shortage of treated water supplies for homes and businesses throughout Dublin city. Some Dublin flat complexes do not get a regular supply, while leakages remain to be fixed throughout the country. That is the reality we face at the present time.

The problem is not a lack of water because our reservoirs have plentiful supplies. The problem is that we do not have enough treated water but that message has not got through. We hear about plans for a major infrastructural pipeline scheme to bring water from the River Shannon to Dublin, but we have lots of water here, although we are not in a position to treat it. It costs approximately €1 billion per annum to provided treated water, which is undoubtedly a scarce resource. The motion refers to 43%, but on average 40% of water supplies are lost through fractured pipes. That is the way it has been for the three and a half years the Minister has been in Government. There has been no investment in infrastructure.

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