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

It is obvious. To add to Deputy Coppinger’s examples, we have had two major leaks in Dún Laoghaire, one of which, on the West Pier, went on for weeks, with tens of millions of gallons of water pouring out of the pipe while the council and Irish Water argued over which of them was responsible. It went backward and forward and backward and forward, and the water just kept pumping out. Another leak in Monkstown went on for two weeks, with tens of millions of gallons of water pouring out on a main road. Who is responsible? Nobody is responsible - or we will fight for weeks over who is responsible. Somewhere down the line, in this interesting bureaucracy, the customer will have to navigate from the council back to Irish Water and then on to this gang. Will this gang be running a call centre? I do not know. The customer will go backward and forward, around and around on the merry-go-round, whereas once upon a time they just went down to the council and said, "Can you sort this out?". While they might have had to fight with the council, at least they could ask their local representatives to argue the case for them. There was some line of accountability and a physical office with real human beings, not disembodied voices in a call centre, with whom one could engage, as well as a democratic forum in which to raise matters. Now we have lots of demarcation lines, so nobody will be responsible and everybody will be responsible, and we have some disembodied entity a far distance away that is going to resolve the dispute.

There will be far more disputes than we have now. Will the Minister enlighten us as to the costs for all of this? Are extra costs anticipated for the extra resources and staffing the Commission for Energy Regulation will need to deal with this new job? Believe me, it will have a big and confusing job.

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