Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

Unfortunately five minutes will not be enough. Ireland has more than 5,000 lakes, 7,000 km of coastline, a network of rivers and streams spanning the country and high levels of rainfall with an average of 150 days of rainfall in the east and south east and an average of 225 days of rainfall in parts of the west. This should result in an abundance of easily sourced and available clean water. What people do not understand is why we have not harvested this. Local authorities are constantly stuck with water shortages in winter and summer and water quality issues. The local authorities in the greater Dublin region propose to extract water from the Shannon and pump it to the Dublin region. We are told the water levels in the region are on a knife edge.

According to figures sourced from the All-Island Research Observatory at NUI Maynooth in my constituency, 42.4% of supplied water in Ireland is unaccounted for. The average figure in developing countries is 35%; in the UK it is 19.2%; and in European countries it is 15%. Our best local authority is South Dublin County Council which manages to lose only 20.89% while in Kerry, which is the worst, the figure is 59.81%. This is expensive treated water. The figure for my county of Kildare is 28% which is the fourth best. Our drinking water quality is far from perfect with the Environmental Protection Agency indicating that 15.3% of groundwater is of poor quality, 10.4% of rivers are of poor or bad quality and 24% of lakes are of poor or bad quality. It is extremely unlikely that we will comply with the water framework directive in 2015.

It is a matter of fact that many of our pipelines contain asbestos and lead which is unbelievable. It is hard to see why people are opposed to being charged for the installation of water meters. It is not hard to see why people would be opposed to the installation of meters-----

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