Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, told us that we needed Irish Water because of the need to stop leaks and the waste of water. Why were the leaks not tackled immediately after Irish Water was set up? Some 40% of water in Dublin is still leaking into the ground. The Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, said this was about conservation. The Government paid people a conservation grant of €100, but they could leave the bath water running all night. Where is the conservation element?

The Minister also spoke about best practice. The Government spent a fortune on consultants to learn what best practice was, but when it had to go back to local authority engineers, it was told that what had been just designed was a load of rubbish. It binned that design and then took advice from local authority engineers who had been running the existing system. What a waste of money that was.

It would be cheaper to abandon Irish Water. People are considering the amount that would be wasted in doing away with it, but more would be wasted in keeping it.

We need a State-run regional water system and we do not need the entity called "Irish Water". Just about everybody in this House was okay with the idea of water being paid for through central taxation, which is a fair system. Direct taxation is based on ability to pay but we now have the highest indirect taxation in Europe, which makes it very unfair. A water tax does not incorporate one's ability to pay. During the election campaign in Wexford, of the 20,000 houses on whose doors I knocked I would say one half of the inhabitants would struggle to pay any water charge. Irish Water was set up as a commercial entity so that it could be easily sold. In England today, households pay approximately €900 per year for water. The Irish people are dead right to oppose any water charge such as this and we should continue to pay for water through a fair central taxation system.

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