Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Irish Water will not work and will probably not last, but even what the Government has proposed in this section will not work. Many problems happen at local level. This is the folly of removing functions from local authorities. Although national co-ordination is a good idea, we do not need a super-quango to ensure it. We just need co-ordination between local authorities and a small body to oversee it. Many of the problems, grievances and issues that will emerge with Irish Water will be spotted at local level by the authorities' workers and the areas' residents. When bursts happen, people will not get proper responses, no one will come out to fix things, etc. The best sort of consultation forum is one's local authority. It has local elected representatives as well as local offices with real human beings whom one can approach instead of somebody in a call centre that, although it may be located in Ireland at the moment, will probably end up in-----

See this speech in context