Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At this stage the Government seems to have floundered from one fiasco to the next with Irish Water. There seems to be no end to it and the hole seems to be getting deeper. The Taoiseach told us yesterday that he was not going to put up with under-investment in water, but the Government has been doing that for three and a half years because it has not been investing for the past three and a half years.

The problems remain. The Government has not fixed any of the leaking pipes. We still have sewerage going into the sea. In Wexford there were 11 village projects ready to go. They had been approved and were simply waiting for funding from central government. Irish Water came along and put them on hold. They have gone right back to the preamble stage. We have raw sewerage going into the sea in Wexford from Duncannon, Arthurstown, Ballyhack and Kilmore Quay. We have secondary treatment going in from big towns like Gorey and Courtown. Irish Water has delayed all of this.

The Taoiseach will remember very well back in the late 1980s the rod licence dispute. It shook the nation at the time. People felt that a freedom was being taken from them, even if it was only a £5 fee to fish in public lakes. It captured the nation at the time and there was a huge feeling about it. It reached the stage where it was either the case that the Government was going to fall over it or it had to abolish it. Irish Water has reached the same stage. The cat is out of the bag and putting it back in aint going to be easy.

See this speech in context