Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:

“supports:

— the establishment of Irish Water as a long-term strategic investment project to deliver the necessary water services infrastructure and quality of services required to meet statutory compliance and demographic needs;

— the management of our water resources effectively to ensure Ireland can continue to attract major overseas investment and employment; and

— the view that metered charging is the fairest form of water charging with benefits in proper management of this vital resource;

notes:

— that the Programme for Government provides for the introduction of a fair funding model to deliver a clean and reliable water supply which will involve the installation of water meters in all households;

— the introduction of water meters for households promotes the sustainable use of water and has been recognised by the OECD as the fairest way to charge for water services;

— the new funding model based on domestic tariffs and metered usage will allow for expanded investment and is aligned with the requirements of the Water Framework Directive;

— that the Government has introduced measures, which include the capping of annual charges at a maximum of €160 for single adult households and €260 for all other households until the end of 2018, that will provide clarity and certainty and ensure that water charges are affordable for customers;

— the announcement of the water conservation grant as a means of addressing water issues for all households on equal terms and which will reduce households’ outlay on water services;

— the prioritisation by Irish Water of the elimination of boil water notices and the fact that by April of this year over 17,000 people will no longer be subject to boil water notices;

— the Government’s intention to bring forward further legislative proposals to underpin the collection of charges; and

— that well over 200,000 jobs in Ireland are dependent on water-intensive processes including the agri-food, pharma-chem, ICT and tourism sectors, and therefore need a secure water supply; and

welcomes:

— the fact that the number of customers that registered with Irish Water is 990,000 out of a total of 1.237 million households that have responded;

— the progress with the roll-out of the domestic metering programme being delivered by Irish Water, with over 625,000 meters installed to date;

— the achievement of greater economies of scale in running water services by Irish Water, with €12 million in procurement savings alone achieved in the company’s first year of operations, in the context of an annual operating costs efficiency target of 7 per cent per annum set by the Commission for Energy Regulation;

— the increased capital investment in water and waste water services by Irish Water, with investment in the period 2014-2016 to amount to almost €1.4 billion, excluding metering and establishment costs; and

— the clear commitment given by the Government that Irish Water will remain in public ownership and the provision in the Water Services Act 2014 that will require any future proposal to change public ownership of Irish Water to be put to the people via a plebiscite.”

I am pleased to move the Government's amendment to the motion from some Technical Group Members. I will start by making a distinction between those politicians who believe in empowering people through anger, those who espouse a sense of failure and hopelessness for our great country and who at all times try to articulate that Ireland is a failed country and a failed state and that we should be more like Greece. I believe differently. There are politicians who enjoy failure, who stand in the way of progress in order that they can enhance their political profile and make their names on the airwaves, and who cannot accept that progress can ever be made in this great country because it is against their agenda.

That is not the politics of this Government, nor should it be the politics of any Government. We want to empower people through work, not through victimhood. We want to ensure Ireland is a success. Ireland was a failed state but it no longer is. The challenge now is about sharing the recovery, making people feel it, not establishing it. Economic progress is based on stability and creativity, not destruction, populism and scaremongering while ignoring future problems that are staring us in the face.

Irish Water will create, retain and sustain 40,000 jobs in this economy out to 2020. This is what many Opposition Members want to abandon and they are real jobs.

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