Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish to remind the Minister of what the Taoiseach said yesterday during Leaders' Questions: "I have been a supporter for a very long time of the idea that Dáil questions should be answered as fully and as completely as possible." Fair play to the Taoiseach. Perhaps he could have let the Minister, Deputy Noonan, know that this is the approach of the Government. Four weeks ago I asked the Taoiseach a very simple question. I asked how many people had paid the water charges so far. In response, he advised me to toddle along to the AV room where Irish Water would give me the answers to any questions I wished to ask. Indeed, he accused me of thinking I was Julius Caesar because I wanted an answer to a question in the segment of Dáil business known as Leaders' Questions. He then said that the point of Leaders' Questions was to tell us where to go.

Undeterred by this less than full and complete answer, Deputy Coppinger and myself duly toddled along to the audiovisual room and asked the people from Irish Water the question. They confirmed that over 600,000 bills had passed their pay-by date and that they knew how many of those had been paid and how many had not. However, they refused outright to give us the figures for payment.

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