Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, to the House.

If we look back over the past couple of years we will note there has been a good extension of services to rural areas through group water schemes. Not only do they provide water to many peripheral rural communities and houses, they also ensure that the man with the digger and men who help lay the pipes have work. There are ways of getting people back working and we should, therefore, consider possibilities in this area. New reservoirs have been constructed, including in my own parish. There are still challenges and real goals to be achieved in terms of taking water to towns such as Rathmullan, a big tourist town. It has been waiting years for replacement pipes.

There is a problem with the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in that councils will be rewarded for leakages. That is how the system operates. The main trunk supply in Letterkenny – I am not talking about the pipes that burst near houses, disenfranchising many people – did not have many leaks this winter but the pipes still need to be replaced. Deputy McGinley implied corrosion and rusting have halved the internal diameter of pipes. These need to be replaced. Councils, however, are in a catch-22 position in that if they do not record leakages they will not obtain funding. This reward system is not good enough in that one is rewarded for leakages. It puts the onus on councils to report to the Department stating they have innumerable leakages in a certain system and that they are in need of funding. The councils that do need to have pipes replaced adequately are not receiving funding.

Insufficient emphasis has been placed on water conservation grants. The group holding up the Soldiers of Destiny, the so-called saviours of the planet, the Green Party, plans to introduce climate change legislation in the coming weeks that will, if it gets away with it, possibly decommission cows from fields. I am sure the offices of the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran, a rural man from Roscommon, will prevent that from happening. There was a missed opportunity in terms of having conservation grants to save water. Ten litres of water are used in every flush of a toilet and people do not think twice about flushing a toilet 20, 30 or 40 times per day. We must consider a reward rather than punishment.

My last point concerns the design-build-operate, DBO, system. The DBO system, like many other systems, looked good on paper at the time in question but it is such that the private operators in schemes will ultimately cripple the local authorities. Local authorities are in a very precarious position at present because they have bills to pay at the end of the year to private companies that participated in DBO deals. It is a ransom in some instances. Local authorities, especially in my county, do not have the same revenue stream they used to have. They are not receiving the same revenue from rates that they used to receive given that businesses are closing down, nor do they have the revenue that they used to obtain through the planning system. Everything should be on the table for review. The system is not working in that it is not based on a reward model. Pipes will obviously be provided where there is poorer infrastructure but counties that need replacement pipes will not be able to get them. There is plenty of food for thought in my comments.

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