Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for her guidance. I will keep it in mind.

How Irish Water has been structured is very disappointing and to use this Bill as a way to get money from the people to pay Irish Water for its services leaves a bad taste in the mouth because of the nature of Irish Water and the flaws in its structure to date.

It is hardly surprising that there is such civic resistance to money going to the organisation and it is not going to go away. Although many such issues settle down eventually, this one will not. Whoever is in government after the general election will face many problems with it and anything connected with Irish Water will remain poisoned. Every time people are dragged through the courts to have money for water bills extracted from them, it will create a bad atmosphere and major unrest.

Sometimes I try to put myself in the positions of the Ministers who are trying to make decisions in these areas and I only look stupid. It is difficult to make calls and come up with the right answers. Having to come up with the answers and make the right decisions is very challenging. If I were Taoiseach, I would say to myself that Irish Water had been a disaster and that we had spent a lot of money, but that although doing a U-turn would go down badly, going ahead with it would not be good either. Although it would be a difficult decision to make, the Government should scrap Irish Water. Introducing a system whereby we supplied water through the local authorities again, or on a regional basis rather than county by county, or a system like the one that functions in Italy would be a good decision.

Regarding the Bill, we need to seriously consider the idea of a community service structure. For a person who has a €100,000 car and likes to speed on the motorway, paying fines is not very troublesome. I would like such a person to do community service rather than pay a fine. Community service is very educational. I have had the privilege of doing it and learned much from the experience. I learned things about myself, which was very interesting.

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