Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues and all Members who have contributed to this debate. It has been very informative and has established the point we have reached in the past two or three years and in the past week, since this issue came to prominence further to "Today with Sean O’Rourke” when a question was put to the CEO of Irish Water. Deputy Coffey made the point that it is important to consider the responses on the public record by the various players ever since. It is right and proper to do that. I accept that point.

In the first instance the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, said on the “Prime Time” programme that the Cabinet and he had approved €180 million for the establishment of a public utility. That is what they did in 2012 and at the meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht, in November 2012, all Deputies would have had an opportunity to elicit how this utility was going to be established. I thought about that comment on the way home and since then and checked the record because I could not remember that specifically being spoken about. I will return to that point.

Yesterday, in response to Deputy Martin’s queries about freedom of information, the basis of this motion, and further to the lack of information, accountability, openness and transparency in this process, the Taoiseach said, "This [Irish Water] is a public utility in public ownership. Therefore, there is nothing that should be secret about it and there is nothing that will be secret about it – the Deputy may smile". Some of us on this side of the House could not contain ourselves when we thought about what had preceded this response. The Taoiseach went on to say, "Of course this will be subject to the full rigours of freedom of information, as it should be, because it involves the Irish taxpayer and the Irish people". I agree with him but he does not agree with our motion. He does not agree with the Bill that is referred to in the motion and he does not agree with the other Bill that we published this week on the Comptroller and Auditor General because, as the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin says, it is not yet practicable. It will not be practicable in his words until the commercial entity, the monopoly, the company with no competitors, is up and running because sensitive information might emanate.

I accept the point that the Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy O’Dowd, made last night in response to Deputy Calleary, that he was speaking on his own behalf when he said that the Department had not given him an answer and that it was unfortunate that Deputy Kevin Humphreys did not get the information he sought. I would have expected some member of the Government during the course of this debate to offer a similar apology to the rest of us who found no solace or information on behalf of those we represent, the taxpayers, in this process since it emerged, as we now know, in September 2012. The Minister of State said:

The budget is being funded by a commercial loan which Irish Water has arranged with the National Pensions Reserve Fund, NPRF. There has been a suggestion that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, deliberately withheld details of the establishment costs of Irish Water from Deputies. This is simply not the case. The total budget for the establishment of Uisce Éireann is €180 million, which includes the contingency of €30 million to which I refer. While the overall budget was outlined to the Economic Management Council and the water reform sub-committee of the Cabinet committee on economic infrastructure, no Exchequer funds have been provided to date to Bord Gáis or Irish Water in respect of these establishment costs.

That begins to contradict what the Minister said on “Prime Time”, that the funds were raised in the normal fashion, by going to Cabinet, getting approval, then informing us on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht of his Vote for the following year and so forth.

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