Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

It is not hard to see why people would be opposed to the installation of meters for a system that wastes 42% of the product it is supposed to deliver. This means 42% never gets to a tap. We are discussing establishing an agency that will operate as a business and will be allowed to bill people and which will inherit this level of wastage. Would the Minister of State pay for something if this was the quality of service? One can understand why people feel aggrieved.

I support the idea of conserving water but the way the Government has gone about it is backwards. It is exactly the same as the household charge. Essentially the Government will start the same war with the local authorities as was the case in the 1980s and 1990s and I know what that was like. Week after week water was cut off. I know what this means and it takes years to repair the damage with a public agency when this approach is taken. It looks like we will establish HSE 2 and there will be a layer of Teflon between the Government and the delivery agency. The regulator will be the one to decide on the free allowance. I am not opposed to charging for waste but it must be those who are wasting water who are charged or penalised.

Will the Minister of State give us a guarantee that if we end up out of the bailouts in 2018 or 2019 and must begin paying €5 billion a year to the lenders and they start scratching around looking for something saleable that this will not be for sale? I do not believe the Minister of State can give such a guarantee.

We need to reach a point where we have a proper local government system. We have damaged the prospect of this with the household charge. We need to have a rational debate on the provision of water. Many local authorities have collected development levies. They have liabilities. How will these be handled if there is a transfer? Large amounts of money in development contributions cannot be spent at local government level. Deputies Clare Daly and Luke Flanagan and I are members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Environment, Transport, Culture and the Gaeltacht and we have been trying to put together a report and meet experts in a range of fields. We felt we had no choice but to withdraw from the working group in the same way as Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have because there is no point in being on the committee if the decisions have already been made.

I have been told by numerous people that contracts have already been awarded to companies for the provision of water meters.

See this speech in context