Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to engage again in debate in regard to the amendments that have been made by Government in this Water Services Bill. I welcome that opportunity in the context of the amended legislation that ensues and the opportunity for us to highlight the difficulties, the problems and the deficiencies of what has been proposed. I welcome the change of heart on the part of Government, which is now anxious to allow extended debate on those very issues. I hope it might go a step further and cater for the proposals that emanate and for the amendments that may be placed before the House with a view to improving on what has been an unmitigated disaster and a terrible debacle on the part of everybody associated with it since its inception.

To further the point made by Deputy Ferris, and to refer to the comments made by the Taoiseach some weeks ago when asked his opinion, his impressions or his response to the groundswell of public opinion and the show of public distaste, distrust and disgust in regard to the whole process and the proposals of Government, the Taoiseach responded by saying it was not just about water. I do not disagree with him entirely: much of it is about water, obviously, but much of it is not. In addition to those who over the last number of weeks and months were ideologically opposed to the concept, many more have joined forces, including many who simply could not afford or could not contemplate being able to afford the sort of prices that were being bandied about - the sort of prices which it was left to those of us in the Opposition and many others to give an estimate of to the public. Having drilled down into the Government's and the CER's analysis, it became apparent that the price would be far in excess of what was initially promised, despite the opposition even to those figures, which were for averages of €240.

In addition, other people have been totally disgusted by and find almost unbelievable the way in which the Government sought to bring forward and make this concept a reality. We have spoken at length about that and I do not wish to go back over ground already furrowed in that sense. Suffice to say that €700 million has been wasted. Suffice to say there has been no effort during the last three years by Government to address the deficiencies that exist in the network. Suffice to say, as Deputy Stanley said, that despite calls by me and others, including many Oireachtas Members, there has been no complete audit, no complete detail, no complete analysis or no complete roadmap of what is required to rectify the system throughout the country and address the deficiencies which exist in Dublin, which are real and live and have to be addressed.

I apologise for not having been present for the Minister's initial statement today. To pick up on his interaction with Deputy Stanley, the Minister again made the point about the savings and efficiencies that are evident in regard to Poolbeg. Of course, we welcome that and we welcome any efficiencies that can be gained in the delivery of projects which have been committed to in the past. We recognise that costs associated with these developments, thankfully, have come down in recent years. However, we also recognise, since the Minister's announcement in the House a couple of weeks ago, that more details have emerged of the lack of clarity and certainty that existed two or three years ago when consultants, at a cost of €75 million, could not give a clear and effective indication of the sort of expenditure that would be incurred in regard to the provision of meters throughout the country. When we add that to the €170 million it cost to set up Irish Water in its entirety, and add that to the €540 million I mentioned earlier, and €25 million on top of that on a yearly basis in regard to interest payments - when we add all of that - it would take a good few Poolbegs to recoup the sort of costs the Minister talks about in this area.

To go back to what the Taoiseach had to say, yes, it is about more than water, and, yes, it is that this issue and the way in which Government has handled it is proving the tipping point that many people can no longer withstand, given the sort of pressures being placed upon them by Government. The Taoiseach must ask himself why that is the case. It is very clear to me and to others that, when we rewind the clock to the 2011 election, we all know the predicament in which the country found itself then and we all know what went before. We all know the efforts that were made by the previous Government to arrest the decline in income and to arrest and close the gap between income and expenditure. We all know a plan was put in place and two thirds of the lifting had been done even at that stage, and one third remained to be done. We accept that much of what had to be done thereafter would prove even more difficult than what went before - of course, we do. We accept that any budgetary measures that had to be taken thereafter would have to be seen to be progressive, not only by the Members of this House but by the experts outside it in their analysis of what had to be done and what was being done. Unfortunately, when we look at the outside expertise, the ESRI, for example, has said that those measures were regressive in nature. That is the first point.

Against that, it is not as if it would be easy for any incoming Government, as it was then, to lay the blame on what went before, although, of course, we expect that in the cut and thrust of politics. However, we have to acknowledge that the previous Government and those within it made the books available to anybody who wished to fight that election. I remember commentary of the current Tánaiste, Deputy Burton, coming out of the Department of Finance ashen-faced. It is not as if they did not know what was facing them but they still continued to inform the public during the course of that election campaign that things would be done differently, and that there would be a revolution, not only in economic terms but in democratic terms and in the way this House does its business, none of which has come to pass. They gave the impression that the economic adjustment would be easier and softer than what was proposed. They gave the impression that any agreement that had been entered into with those who were making funds available at a reduced rate, or a rate other than the then market rate, would be overturned. They gave the impression that any capital expenditure that had been accrued by this State in regard to capitalising banks would be taken back. We heard during the lifetime of the Government, in June 2012, about the game-changer, but we have seen nothing to substantiate that since, only an acknowledgement that the rest of the EU said we had a special case - we were the Barney country of Europe; we were special. It has not gone any further than that and nothing has happened. The green jersey was put on, and there was everything else we heard from the then Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, at the time.

The Taoiseach himself made one commitment that captures all that was wrong with that campaign and what has happened since. The Taoiseach stood on the back of a lorry in Roscommon and he told the people of Roscommon that if they gave him two Fine Gael TDs, he would give them an accident and emergency unit in Roscommon. He failed to give them that and he does not have two TDs in Roscommon any more.

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