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

-----of what it is to live in a rural community and provide one's own services because in Deputy Coppinger's Utopia everything just arrives at one's doorstep and there is no need to pay for it. However, in my part of the country that is not the way things work. In my part of the country, people go out and form a group water scheme, they bore their own well and they provide their own water. What could be wrong with any Government that brings in a scheme for the first time in the history of the State that says to those people it values what they have done for their families, children and communities and that for the first time they will get a very small amount of money. The only thing I will be saying to the Minister is that this should be an ongoing scheme given the costs involved in group water schemes. The Minister of State in his own part of the Comeragh mountains and places like that and in his experience as a member of Waterford County Council will be acutely aware that this is a real issue. For the first time in my membership of a local authority for eight years and as a Member of this House since 2011, I have seen real progress being made in a very short period of time with regard to the delivery of water services in my part of the country. We have had a disparate carry-on for long enough whereby it was everybody's problem, bar the people who were responsible for it. Finally, somebody has said that enough is enough. We must look to future investment in job creation. We must ensure that communities are not closed down as happened in Galway city when it was exposed to cryptospiridium for months on end-----

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