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

It is now over two months since I asked the Taoiseach how many people had paid water charges. One would have though that was a simple question. The Taoiseach answered it by telling me he was not here to spoon-feed me, but advised me to "toddle along" to the audiovisual room at 4 p.m. on 13 May where Irish Water would give me the answer to any question I wished to ask. He then told us the purpose of Leaders' Questions was to tell us where to go. That was all before he declared himself to be a long-time supporter of the idea that Dáil questions should be answered as fully and completely as possible. As he presumably knows, Deputy Ruth Coppinger and I duly toddled along to the audiovisual room to ask Irish Water the questions raised. We were told by it that it would not be "helpful" by giving us the figures.

Following that I submitted a freedom of information request which was rejected on the grounds of commercial sensitivity by Irish Water, which is a monopoly. I appealed the refusal and got the same response. Approximately one month ago, when the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, was standing in for the Taoiseach, I asked the question again. Instead of getting any answers, I got a cut-price advertisement for Irish Water, which I could have got by turning on any radio station at almost any time of the day. The Minister did say, however, that we should direct our questions to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly. In fact, Deputy Ruth Coppinger had submitted a written question for the next day to the Minister, Deputy Kelly, which was ruled out of order. That is six different ways, which started more than two months ago with a question to the Taoiseach, we have tried to get those figures. It is quite a saga to get very simple information.

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