Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The local property tax is the Minister's tax. When it was first introduced in order to neutralise opposition to it, he said all the money was going to local services. Last autumn, we discovered that all the money was going to Irish Water. In recent weeks we have discovered that a huge amount of that money is going to line the pockets of consultants. Can the Minister get his story any straighter than the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, in terms of what he knew about local property tax income going to consultants in Irish Water. Did the Minister for Finance know about this expenditure and, if so, when did he know about it? Did he scrutinise it? Has he assessed whether we were getting value for money for this huge amount of money that has gone into the pockets of Irish Water consultants.

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