John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not have inside information and welcome the points made by the former Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd. I spoke on a Private Members' Bill a number of weeks ago. When insults were flying from one side of the House to the other, I said I felt what was needed was to fix the problem and to forget about sacking people left, right and centre. We need to fix a system which has been under-invested in for decades and come to a solution that is clear, certain and affordable. Today's announcements fulfil that criteria.

Members of the Government need to hold up our hands. We have done so in the past number of weeks, but perhaps it came too late. Irish Water needs to do the same. It rushed the water charges, the timeframe was too tight and it has played catch-up on this over the past number of weeks. It did not communicate the message, a point Deputy O'Dowd articulated.

We have seen the consequences of decades of under-investment in my neighbouring county of Roscommon. I am glad to say the problems there will be fixed in the very near future. As a result of the confusion and scaremongering, water charges were not an issue in my constituency until a number of weeks ago. People on group water schemes have been paying for water for the past 20 or 30 years. I welcome the fact they will be included in the €100 rebate and if some make some profit on that because their charges are under €100 per annum, so be it. It will make up for all the years they paid when there was no rebate. I am confident that today's measures got it right and brought certainty and clarity to the situation.

What has happened today also demonstrates that people have been listened to, which is a good thing. The charges will be capped until 2019.

On privatisation, I never had any doubt that the Government would try to privatise Irish Water, but it is important to put into legislation a proviso that if any future Government decided to privatise it, that would have to be decided by the people in a referendum.

I am glad that conservation can be achieved through the use of meters. I gather up to 70% of people can reduce their water charges by using meters. The charges can be reduced, but cannot be increased. The requirement for PPS numbers has been abolished and those which have been provided will be deleted, in conjunction with the Data Protection Commissioner.

While the journey to today's announcement has taken a long time and has been a rocky road, and we might ask why we could not have done this three or six months ago, a lot of the problems have been fixed.

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