Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The figure of €500 is interesting because it is significantly higher than the water charge for a family. Deputy Adams is travelling to the United States, a country where water charges are the norm and where he receives medical attention instead of using the Irish health system. To some extent, some of the Sinn Féin Deputies are living between two continents, as it were. They live here for the purposes of ordinary life and for the purposes of high life, they jet off around the world to eat dinners in luxury hotels that cost more than what will be the average water charge, potentially for a couple of years. I am not aware of what will be the total cost of the dinner, only the indicative prices.

The main issue is that the Government has made very solid progress. I stated again in discussions a couple of weeks ago that my view is that the Irish Water project was rushed. I accept that people are very concerned and I am very anxious to set out a clear, affordable structure that produces clean water to meet our economic and social needs, delivers investment that will result in thousands of jobs in the economy, with which we could do, and provides us with the system we need.

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