Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

It is a damning indictment of the Fine Gael party, which was in government in the 1990s and again in the last three years, and its predecessors in Fianna Fáil, that 40% of expensively treated water is leaking into the ground. That is because successive governments have failed to invest in our water services or to give adequate funding to the local authorities to fix our water network and make it efficient. How could the local authorities remediate this disgusting and disgraceful waste when they were not given the funding to do so? Furthermore, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, when in government, absolutely failed to amend the building regulations to ensure that water-saving devices that would have saved billions of litres of treated water every year were installed in people's homes. Now the Minister has the neck to come in here and say we have to have this water tax for this, that and the other reason. I will tell the Minister how to make savings - stop paying the bondholders billions of euro. The Irish people never incurred that debt; it is not their debt to pay. The Government should stop paying the €9 billion in interest alone and put those funds into our water infrastructure, health and education and transform our society.

What is the Minister's estimate of the water charge per household?

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