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

The Minister trumpeted the €150 million in further investment in capital projects during the year, but this ignores the fact that he cut the capital budget this year by €500 million. Even allowing for the additional €150 million, the budget will be down €350 million, which costs approximately 6,000 jobs.

I think we have discussed this before, but the Minister should have put some mechanism in place so that where local authorities spend their development levies, they could, in some way, be compensated for that in the transfer to Irish Water. I am not saying extra money but Irish Water should not get the value of local authority funding. Irish Water should acknowledge, in some way, the recent spending because this will continue until Irish Water is up and running. I am concerned that this will stall and Irish Water will not have the resources in its first six months or 12 months of operation to continue much-needed work. Water service is not a nebulous concept. It is water quality and service which everybody needs.

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