Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know that the word "consultant" is like a red rag to a bull and causes absolute rage. The companies that tendered services to Irish Water were not sitting in an office telling Irish Water what it should do. They tendered for the provision of services, facilities and equipment. IBM, for example, provided hardware and software to put a system in place that actually works. We can be penny wise and pound foolish and invest in an entity like Irish Water but find that it is completely inadequate as time goes on. If we do not invest properly and put in the proper foundations, it will never operate in the way we want. The consultants here are not people sitting in offices with aluminium briefcases saying, "Tell them this is what they should do." It is a tender process for the provision of a service and a facility as a component for providing a platform so that Irish Water can deliver what the Government wants it to deliver - a service for our people, for business and private consumers all over the country - a service that they can be very happy about.

A number of years ago in the west of Ireland I attended the bundling of three rural water schemes. All three schemes were metered, the pipes were all checked and the sources of leaks were dealt with. The 1,200 consumers there were exceptionally happy about this because not only were they metered, but the meters showed that they saved half a billion litres of water in the first year. We cannot go on with the situation in which water is leaking into the ground. Our systems are inadequate and in some cases have been in place for more than 100 years. That is not adequate for the future.

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