Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this Bill, which I support. It provides for the re-imposition of a water rate or water charge. Many people might not realise or even remember that households such as the one in which I lived, which had access to a public water supply, were paying approximately IR£145 per annum as late as 1996 for the pleasure of accessing public water. One of the poorer decisions of the coalition Government at the time was to abolish domestic water rates outside Dublin. People in Dublin never paid for their water, but people in the rest of the country did.

In 1999, I was fortunate to be elected to Cork County Council. It had a huge water and wastewater network which was fundamentally broken. The funding model was a shambles. Non-domestic customers, Exchequer funds and a small amount of council resources were paying into it. Approvals were required for every step to be taken. There were small and large schemes, regional water supply schemes and wastewater schemes, and that was just for County Cork. It was a joke at every step, so much so that the town in which I live is one of the 47 that do not have a wastewater network. It discharges wastewater and sewage directly into a bay. That has been the situation since there was the first mention of having a plan in 1974. That is what the Opposition wishes to continue; that is the regime it would be happy to have in place for the next 20 or 30 years. It has not worked, and it must be changed and remodelled. The consolidation of 34 local authorities, with 34 different local directors of services, 34 different water management systems and 34 different regimes, into one national water network is the right move. Deputy Ó Cuív has acknowledged that.

The debate now is about who pays. Water must be paid for - there is no argument from any Member of the House about that. The argument appears to be about whether it is paid for from taxation or through the user pays principle. There are some statistics which people are inclined to brush over very quickly and conveniently. Of the 2.3 million to 2.4 million households in this country, just 1.6 million access public water supplies. Approximately 800,000 households in this country do not access a public water supply and will not be customers of Irish Water. They provide their own water at their own expense, sometimes at quite a high cost, through a bored well or a group water scheme. Members opposite would oblige them to pay, through an increased level of taxation, to bring the water supply network in this country up to scratch. It is absolute nonsense. In the same breath they speak about equality, fairness and treating people the same. They do no such thing. These households are predominantly people in rural Ireland. People in rural Ireland have no problem subsidising public transport. Some use it a lot, some do not use it at all. They subsidise public transport because they know it is good for the economy and that the country benefits. However, this is like asking them to pay also for the ticket. That inherently does not square.

A total of 930,000 households have registered with Irish Water. Many of those are not users of and do not access the public water supply, but 50% of those that access the public water supply have registered, and there are still two months to the deadline. One per cent of the households in this country use 20% of our water. When one hears nonsense that district metering will discover the leaks, one must cringe and wonder what break from reality people are taking.

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