Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This relates to the amendment because it is about the water conservation grant, which is designed to ensure that people can have a safe and potable water supply, including in a rural area where one might have groundwater that is at risk of contamination from cryptosporidium and septic tanks that do not function properly. In these cases, a person must buy an ultra-violet light to kill the bacteria that is flowing into the water they might use to make bottles for a young child. They might have to take a shower or have the audacity to have to wash their clothes, which some people in here might have a difficulty with.

The reality is that rural dwellers do that entirely at their own expense. Up to now, nobody on the Opposition benches has ever mentioned them. The only thing those on the Opposition benches have mentioned is that they do not want them to get anything. They do not want them to get the €100 grant and for a lot of people, such as pensioners living alone who have wells, pensioners who are members of group water schemes where their water could cost anything over a couple of hundred euro, this is a significant amount of money. The only query I have had about it in my constituency is when will people physically see the €100 because for the first time the State has recognised that something needs to be done for them.

I listened attentively to the remarks of the Deputies opposite and I fail to understand what they have against people in rural communities. There was a time when one of the Deputies opposite wanted to have a referendum on Irish Water. He wanted to put Irish Water into the Constitution but he would not put the aquifers or the infrastructure into the Constitution. The people who are currently providing their own water in homes, towns and villages are people living in Outer Mongolia, these are people in many cases who are living on the outskirts of regional towns and cities across the country who have no choice but to provide their own water. Those people have registered in large numbers because they have come to me saying they have had to pay for their water by way of a group water scheme where they have had to make the initial capital investment, engage engineers, do the planning applications, manage it with the local authorities, install meters and where volunteers read meters. Water meters are not a new construct arriving out of Saturn tomorrow morning, they have been in rural Ireland for a long time and people have had them read for a long time.

However, all of a sudden, because we are going to make a level playing field and because we are going to ask everybody to make a contribution for the provision of water, some people have an issue with that. They believe that because one is living in a rural location and because the State never bothered to provide a service to those rural dwellers - probably the only service they are provided with is the delivery of post - and because rural dwellers have never been provided with a water service or a sewer and they have had to provide their own septic tanks and by accident of birth they live in a rural location. Some members of the Opposition will parade around the country looking for votes, members of Deputy Stanley's party and Deputy Ó Cuív's party and everyone else. Will they say to those people that because they are on a rural water scheme and because they have a septic tank and a well, they are second class citizens and they do not deserve the €100 grant? They will not. They will be mealy-mouthed about it by saying they are not really in favour of the €100 grant but will help fill out the form all the same. they will send out the leaflets when the legislation passes. That is as sure as night follows day. Deputy Stanley probably has the leaflet organised already to drop it around places like Mountmellick and the outskirts of Portlaoise and everywhere like that, with the message, "Don't forget to claim your €100 off Alan Kelly". Perhaps Deputy Stanley will do what he should do-----

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