Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

I am shocked as although my question was quite specific, the Minister did not address a single part of it. The question indicated that the Minister is privy to information submitted by local authority engineers which undermines the entire premise of the establishment of Irish Water in the first place. In particular, they have pinpointed serious flaws in the PricewaterhouseCoopers study. The comparison used was Scottish Water and the analysis submitted three major flaws in this comparison. For example, the indicated pipe network, at 25,000 km, is half what it is in reality. In addition, the indicated Scottish Water staff was in the region of 1,600 but the real figure is 3,500. In other words, a picture was painted of Scottish Water being much more efficient than local authorities in Ireland in order to justify the establishment of Irish Water. There were factual inaccuracies and serious omissions and although I asked the Minister to comment, he has not even mentioned the issue. Will he answer the question I asked? Perhaps he picked up the wrong piece of paper but I would like to get an answer.

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