Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

From the outset of this debacle the Government has stated time and again that water is a scarce resource and that people need to conserve it. It had the willing ear of the people on the issue and people have generally been progressive on the issue of water conservation, yet when we ask Ministers to set out the Government's water conservation strategy, we get little by way of response. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government tells us that a comprehensive water conservation programme will be undertaken by Irish Water and that it will cover the full spectrum of measures, including conservation-related customer awareness and education campaigns. Considering the hundreds of millions of euro paid by Irish Water to consultants, the Minister could forgive those of us on this side of the House for having high expectations of such a strategy. Sadly, none of these millions has conserved one drop of water. In reality, it is simply conserving the lifestyles of the consultants in question.

Like the Labour Party leader and Tánaiste, Irish Water has taken a reductionist approach to water conservation. The much heralded strategy is merely a short list of patronising instructions. Has the Minister seen the website? I could not believe it when I saw it; I could not get over what was written on the website. There were instructions telling people to shower less and turn off the tap when brushing their teeth. This does not amount to a strategy, even by the Government's low standards. If I were to walk into any primary school first class classroom today, I would be able to create the same list for far less money.

Behavioural change is just one element of water conservation. Arguably, if the Government was serious about changing behaviour, it would have proposed a system that would provide people with an annual allocation of sufficient water to meet their daily needs, charging only for excess water used. When we press the issue with those in government, they tell us that the Irish Water capital investment plan sets out a water conservation project. This is a grandiose description of what the rest of us normally call investment in critical infrastructure. I am referring to the capital investment in which governments normally gets involved, especially in times of economic crisis. It is a capital spend funded by taxation.

Speaking at a meeting of the environment committee last month, Mr. Paul McGowan of the Commission for Energy Regulation told the members that the regulator has a function in respect of the conservation of water resources and that the greatest area of water conservation is reducing leaks. It is as plain and as simple as that. Despite Deputy Joan Burton and her party colleagues' insistence that the need for water charges is the result of feckless citizens leaving their taps on night and day, the dogs in the street know who is really at fault for the vast amounts of water wasted within the system.

The trickle of investment by the Government in infrastructure over the past number of years is the root of the problem. We saw a massive collapse in capital investment when the Government came into power. We have never previously seen a collapse so large. Capital spending is what is necessary in this case but instead we have seen the fiasco factory that is the Government create a tin-pot corporate entity called "Irish Water" to do the job for it. The Government has separated the job from itself. Citizens are very aware of this. If we had real political leadership at the helm of Government, the positive attitude toward behavioural change could have been harnessed. As with wind energy, the Government's ignorant policies have actually soured public opinion in respect of what should have been an easy win.

If the Government was serious about conserving water at household level, it would be incentivising families to adapt their homes to benefit, for example, from the harvesting of rainwater. There would not be a new build in the State that did not have a rainwater harvesting system providing water for toilets and outdoor taps. The bottom line is that the Government does not give a whit about water conservation. No matter how often it denies it, the decision to off-load the State's water infrastructure to a corporate entity is an ideological one. Not only are they failing to be the guard dogs of Fine Gael in government, but Labour Ministers are pushing the ideological fight for the privatisation of these important public services.

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