Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will share my time with Deputy Brendan Smith.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It was interesting to read the Bill, which covers issues relating to the establishment of the company. However, it does not cover at all how the company will or should operate or the costs and implications for citizens. I will not go into the details of the legislation, but it is all about membership of boards, conflicts of interest of staff and ensuring Members of the Oireachtas are not on the board. The Bill is taken up with those kinds of issues rather than dealing with the substance of what the legislation should be about, the provision of water. It is all about the establishment of a legal, corporate identity.

Bord Gáis is a good organisation and it of all organisations should be the one to do this job. I give it credit for being the only organisation I know of that can dig up a public road, put down a pipeline and repair the road and return it to the condition it was in before it started. It is the only organisation in Ireland, inclusive of the 34 local authorities, with the ability to do that. When local authorities dig up a road and lay a pipe, we can be sure there will be a hollow or a hump.

They might fix it the following year, but it will eventually sink. The Bord Gáis network serves some of the towns in County Laois. I am talking about other counties as well. There is a line that runs for miles across the county, from Athy through Stradbally to Portlaoise and other places. The roads in such areas are impeccable. The line goes around the edges of Portlaoise and through Portlaoise. No other organisation in the country is able to leave a road in its proper condition after doing construction work. Bord Gáis always restores the roads well. The person who is in charge of that programme should give lessons on how to do this job to engineers in all local authority roads departments. After over 100 years in existence, the local authorities have not yet learnt how to do it.

I wish to give some more praise before I mention some of my criticisms. The managing director of the new agency, Mr. John Tierney, is an excellent person. When I was the Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in the last Dáil, he attended a meeting of the committee to discuss the Poolbeg issue, which was the subject of a great deal of criticism at the time. On behalf of the Dublin local authority managers, he went though every step that had been taken in that regard in chronological order. While I have met him on just one or two occasions, I have to say I am highly impressed with him. He is a very capable individual. If anyone is able to do a good job in this regard, I do not doubt that he is an excellent choice for this role. That is all I have to say about the structure.

I object to the decision to give this task to Bord Gáis. The Government is in the process of privatising part of Bord Gáis. At the same time, it is establishing a new subsidiary of Bord Gáis called Irish Water. If the Government is selling one part of the activity of Bord Gáis today, it is not too much of a leap to assume it could sell another part of its activity a number of years down the road. Nobody could be blamed for coming to the conclusion that the Government's decision to give this task to a company that it is in the process of partially privatising will open the door for the future privatisation of water services.

The Minister might say that privatisation is not the plan or the intention, that it is not going to happen, or that it cannot happen without a vote of the Oireachtas. We all know that. Many things happen in that way, however. It is a small step from doing what the Government is currently proposing to do with parts of Bord Gáis to doing the same thing with the Irish Water subsidiary of Bord Gáis in a number of years time. The Minister's assurance is only good for today. It will not hold water five or ten years from now, when a different Minister might be in place or a different attitude might be prevailing. All I am saying is that the Government is making the process of privatising Irish Water very simple by giving responsibility for it, as a separate subsidiary, to Bord Gáis.

Bord Gáis has an aggressive track record of cutting off customers who are in arrears or in the process of defaulting on their accounts. I know from various ESB operators that it does not have a great record in this regard. One of the reasons the job was given to Bord Gáis rather than Bord na Móna or the NRA - I do not know who else was looking for the job at the time - was that it has a customer database and has been praised for knowing how to deal with customers.

This is about the broader issue of water, rather than simply being about the corporate structure of the company. I have examined the big reports that were done by PricewaterhouseCoopers and others a while ago. I do not have the figures in front of me, but my recollection is that the average rate of water loss across the country is approximately 40%, with significant variations across various local authority areas. I think the rate was as high as 60% in Limerick and as low as 20% in south Dublin. I would say the customer should not have to pay more than 60% of the entire cost of this process. There is no reason the customer should have to pay for the 40% of water that is lost through waste and inefficiency. It will be fundamentally wrong if it is built into the cost structure of the new authority that the paying customer will have to carry the can for the 40% of sourced water that is lost to the system through leaks and incompetence. One pays for one's usage of one's telephone. One does not pay for the electricity that is lost in transmission up and down the country. It is inevitable that some of it is lost in transmission. The customer only pays for what shows up on his or her meter as having come into his or her house.

We do not disagree with the idea that people should pay for water over the next couple of years, but we think every house should be guaranteed a minimum amount of free water to meet essential needs. Of course those who use water to fill their pools, wash their cars or water their lawns should pay for the use of that water. There is no doubt about that. Those who are frugal with their water and only use it for basic household essentials like cleaning and cooking should not have to pay more, however, given that they are already making payments through the tax system.

For its first three, four or five years in operation, Irish Water should focus on fixing this country's water mains and pipes. When that has been done and a system that is fit for purpose is in place, Irish Water will be entitled to charge consumers for their usage of water. No charges should be imposed until all of that is in place. Nobody knows yet whether a charge of €300 or €400 per house will be levied. Part of the problem with this legislation is that we are writing a blank cheque for this organisation. We are giving it permission to send bills to this country's unfortunate consumers in respect of its costs, its waste and its overheads. The poor Irish consumer will have to pay. It is not satisfactory that this legislation is set up in such a way.

I am worried about the future development of Irish Water, particularly in light of what happened with Eircom before it was privatised. A certain level of investment took place when Eircom was being run by the Government and financed by the taxpayer. I am afraid the same thing that happened when Eircom became an independent company will happen to this subsidiary of Bord Gáis. In such circumstances, who will do the work needed to find new water sources and supplies? I appreciate that Irish Water is putting various arrangements and service agreements in place with local authorities. If local authorities can carry out all of these functions, why are we putting another superstructure over them? Why is it not possible for local authorities, which are already doing the billing and metering for non-domestic water supplies, to continue that arrangement and extend it to domestic supplies?

I wish to comment briefly on staff issues. The construction jobs that will be created during this process have been mentioned. What will happen to the local authority staff? I presume the Government feels there is a saving to be made in this regard. That cannot happen unless staff numbers are cut. What arrangements will be put in place in local authorities if staff numbers are reduced? What will happen to the rights and entitlements of employees in such cases? Local authority employees who happen to be allocated to the water services section should not be singled out for redundancy if the same thing is not to apply to their colleagues in the roads department, who are essentially doing the same work.

I would like to raise another issue pertaining to Irish Water that does not seem to be dealt with in this legislation. My understanding in this regard has been confirmed. An advertisement that was placed in newspapers a number of weeks ago, when the chief executive was being recruited, referred to water and wastewater. Under the system that is being introduced, the intention is to charge for the water coming into a house. I understand that Irish Water intends to charge for water leaving a house and going to a sewage treatment plant. Water services deal with water coming in and water going out. It seems that an extra charge will be imposed in this respect.

I will set out my understanding of how the charging system will work. A person in an area where water is received from the public supply whose sewage is discharged into the public mains will have to pay a double charge to cover water going in and water going out. A person in an area with a public water supply who has a septic tank cannot be charged the same amount as the person whose water comes in from, and is taken away by, the public utility. As we all know, a person with a septic tank must register it and pay the cost associated with it privately. There has to be a reduced charge for the person who is only getting the water in. There may be some cases in which a house with a private water supply is connected to the main sewer in the local village for some reason. The owner of such a house should have to pay a different charge. Obviously, there are people with their own private sources of water and their own waste water treatment systems in the house or garden. They should not come in under this charge at all. All of these issues need to be teased out.

Who will own the wastewater treatment plants that local authorities have invested in by way of development charges over the last couple of years? All of them were grant aided by the Irish taxpayer through the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the local authorities. The construction of a water treatment plant near Graiguecullen in County Laois, near the border with County Carlow, was funded from development levies. Is a facility that was constructed after money was raised from the private sector locally, as a result of houses being built, to be handed to this new body?

What of the major design, build and operate, DBO, plants at locations such as Portlaoise and several other towns? Who will take over the annual payment to the PPP operator? Up to now, it has been made through the council, but will Irish Water take it over and will it be happy with the charges?

A big issue I have not heard anyone discuss and which applies to many towns is where there is only one drainage system in a town. This means sewage goes to the treatment plant, while the water from houses and that runs off streets goes into the same pipe and on into the same plant. Very few towns have separate drainage systems for wastewater and the water to the sewage treatment plant. The majority of towns I know of have only one drainage system. This means that, following heavy rainfall, a lot of water goes into the sewage treatment plant which, as we all know, causes problems and leads to water flooding into rivers. It is also often the cause of a backup because the tanks cannot take the volume of water coming off public roads, which means there is flooding on roads. Will Irish Water have responsibility for dealing with flooding on the streets of towns when gullies and pipes are blocked between the grate on the public road and the treatment plant? Where will Irish Water's responsibility start and where will the local authorities' responsibility end in dealing with flooding? It is an issue that needs to be dealt with.

The legislation makes no reference to Irish Water being included in freedom of information, FOI, legislation. I expect the Minister will correct this before the Bill is completed in the Dail. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, and the Government have brought forward new freedom of information legislation and stated it is Government policy that every new organisation being established will be covered from day one. We asked the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, about this at a recent committee meeting and, while the Water Services Bill seems to have got out of the traps ahead of his legislation, essentially he saw no reason not to include it. I expect this to happen.

The meters will be owned by Irish Water and I ask that the most sophisticated meter be introduced. We do not want staff, as in the case of the ESB, to physically have to call to homes, even with an electronic meter reader. It should be similar telephone metering at an exchange or central point. Nobody should have to drive around and search for a meter. I ask that it be done in a sophisticated manner because it must be done efficiently to avoid adding extra cost to the system.

With regard to the installation of meters on pipes, I praised Bord Gáis and hope there will be work for its subcontractors. I ask the Minister to ensure Irish Water will give contracts to allow small local contractors to do work on a regional basis. We do not want two or three major contracts for which only the biggest operators in Ireland will be eligible and where it would be for them to decide whether work should trickle down to local subcontractors. The Minister should ensure contracts are given out in discreet amounts. This is one way to ensure contracts will stay in Ireland and with small business and local contractors. While I am not talking about very small contractors, there are many people with competence doing such work and they should be given the opportunity to obtain it.

What about the position of projects in the system? I think of the Laois group sewerage scheme both in terms of the sewage treatment plant and the network improvements in Mountrath, Abbeyleix, Durrow, Rathdowney and Stradbally which are at finalised tender stage or thereabouts, with construction ready to proceed. At what stage will Irish Water take over responsibility for projects under construction? What transitional arrangements will be made for projects already included in the water services investment programme for the next couple of years, particularly those in the planning process but which will not proceed to construction for a couple of years? Is there a commitment that these projects will continue and that Irish Water will be forced to carry on with what is already included in the programme? We hope some of these projects will not drop off the page.

The legislation will have to deal with the issue of meter reading in apartments, which could number 300,000 units. This will pose difficulties and the readings will have to be estimated. We want to know how this work will be done. There is also a need to address the issue of future planning in small towns and villages, particularly where housing developments will not be possible owing to the lack of water. Will Irish Water have a veto on the question of which villages and towns in which houses can be built in the future? This matter must be dealt with.

What body will be responsible for ensuring water quality and dealing with EU regulations? Will this task still fall to the Government or will it be given to Irish Water? Our rivers are not just an outflow from sewage treatment plants; they are also the source of water for human consumption.

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