Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will read out the answer provided in the Taoiseach's letter. It states, "The CSO are working to finalise the report in the next two to three weeks". This is the report about the market corporation test. The preceding paragraphs tell us how expert the CSO staff are. The Taoiseach's letter states that the assessment will then be provided to EUROSTAT before going on to note that, "[The] CSO have been advised that a final response from EUROSTAT is likely to take at least two months from the date of receipt". All along, the Government has been saying that we would know the outcome of the EUROSTAT deliberations in March. In reply to Deputy Fleming and others by way of a letter dated February 2015 following the select committee's questioning of the Taoiseach on his Department's Estimates, he is now saying the final response from EUROSTAT is likely to take at least two months from the date of receipt of the information from the CSO. That is a significant change from what the Government has been saying all along. It is now looking like June.

There have been extraordinary efforts by the Government to cook the books in the direction of trying to pass this test, including, for example, the €60 million in commercial rates that Irish Water was to pay now being taken on board by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. There have been a whole lot of activities to make the balance sheet right; taking costs back onto the State and vice versa. Is the Taoiseach playing for time? Can he confirm this? On the net point, I ask whether the CSO's assessment will be published in its own right when it is completed in two to three weeks' time prior to being submitted to EUROSTAT?

Approximately €5.5 billion was spent between 2000 and 2010 on capital water infrastructure and many improvements emanated from that across the country. In the three years following the establishment of Irish Water, however, the amount of capital expenditure will be less than in the three years prior to its establishment. Most of the projects to which the Taoiseach referred were prepared by local authorities. I recently visited Cork Corporation and, as I said to the Taoiseach, nothing has changed there. The entire staff of the corporation is doing the work they were doing before. The only difference is that they are paid €11 million by Irish Water to do the work. The Taoiseach has created a superstructure above it that has cost a small fortune. The Cabinet sub-committee the Taoiseach chairs decided to spend up to €500 million on water metres that will never be read, or certainly not read in the next three to four years. The conservation element has gone out the window and the Taoiseach needs to be honest with people in that regard. The Taoiseach is saying that people can beat the tariff that is place at the moment but they can only do that if they use no water at all according to the calculations people close to us have made. Can the Taoiseach clarify those two points?

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