Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wonder if Ireland is different from other nations. Do we have a fundamental disconnect with nature or the environment? Is there something in our history, character or national story which means that we do not really take care about the way we interact with nature? One can look at that in different ways. Sometimes, one can be optimistic and think we are very connected to this land but at other times, one thinks that we are not. If one considers the way we have dealt with water over the last 30 or 40 years and the way we treat our wastewater, one emerges with a very poor assessment of how we connect to nature.

For decades, we have planned and built without care or consideration for where we would get water and what we would do with our sewerage and other wastewater systems. We built housing without installing proper wastewater services, sufficient water supply systems or sufficient processing systems to ensure we would get the best quality. We were willing to turn a blind eye and to allow all sorts of practices to develop which, had we really thought about them, we would have known would not work, would pump raw sewage into our streams and cause long-term pollution. That problem started to become transparent when the country started to boom. I recall that it finally caught up with us when further development was being considered in Sandyford Industrial Estate in my former constituency, which is now Deputy Catherine Martin's constituency. The development part of the council was gung-ho to build and to zoom up 30 storey buildings with an Alpine garden on the top. A scientist was obliged to point out that nothing could be done in that area because the water and wastewater systems would not cope with another shed. At the same time, the very beneficial European directives were beginning to drive home the reality of what we had done to our land and our water. We were in breach of almost every environmental directive and were the worst in class in terms of meeting those standards. This was a country that had a green, natural image and in which we had a sense of ourselves as living in harmony with nature but we were fouling our water supply system like no others.

We started to invest in trying to address that problem. Ireland ended up being fined because it had septic tanks everywhere that were leaking and we had to tackle that problem. The Government in which I participated was spending €500 million per year, in difficult economic times, because we realised this was a crisis and that we had to change our ways. At that time, we also had a tax commission to examine how we were managing our tax system. Within that, there was a broad strategic assessment that we had to broaden our tax system away from just tax on labour and value added tax, VAT, and to start putting taxes in place that would get efficiencies and help us to live with nature in a more effective way. It was on that basis that we met with Fianna Fáil in the autumn of 2009 and in revising the programme for Government, we agreed that we would bring forward the concept of developing a surcharge on the wasteful use of water.

I cannot recall every moment of those long and, as the former Minister, Dermot Ahern, said, sometimes tortuous and fraught negotiations but I am quite sure about one thing - there was not a voice or moment of dissent from Fianna Fáil on the basic wisdom of that approach and principle at that time. It went into the revised programme for Government. The former Minister, former Deputy John Gormley, came to the Cabinet with a proposal. It included, as an absolute measure, that whatever we should do should be fair. It should allow people to have a basic allowance so that there is a right to water. It should enshrine a constitutional referendum so we start taking ownership of our connection with nature and ownership of our public water supply.

We left the Government and in the one week between our leaving and the Government falling, the approach was changed by a small measure. Fianna Fáil agreed with the public service to change the nature of how to go about doing it. When Fine Gael and the Labour Party took office, they also changed, without any consultation, the report that had been commissioned to examine the best model. They changed it from saying what sort of single authority should be put in place to saying what sort of commercial utility should be put in place. There was no discussion, no public consultation and no report or analysis. With the stroke of a pen, people were saying that was the solution. Therein lies our problem today. Deputy Kelly's predecessor went at this bald-headed. He did not allow a debate in the House. He established a flat rate charge which had none of the sophistication that was required to win the public over on this. It did not help to have a conservation grant which had no benefit in terms of conservation or really changing the system.

Members of the House know the full details of what has happened in the last four or five years. There is no need to rehearse that and the public movement in which others on this side of the House participated. I understand where they are coming from in terms of this being a validation, in a sense, of that public movement. However, what comes next? What is really in the public interest here? From talking to people who were at those marches and who were adamant on the campaign I find I have a certain common cause. I believe we should examine certain principles. Deputy Cowen said he wishes to be guided by the guiding principles of Fianna Fáil in this.

I am not sure what they are, but I suggest that everyone does have a right to water and that we give a very generous basic allowance so that no one in the State is ever threatened with not having the availability of water. It is not a standard commercial project. Let us do this and enshrine it in a constitutional change, which maybe does not just look at the privatisation issue but might also look at starting to put value on our connection to nature and, for the first time, recognise in our Constitution that the protection of nature is something we need to include in a modern republic and a wider sense of our republic.

Let us also ensure it is fair, in the sense that those who can pay more do so and those who cannot pay do not have to pay, by using the same money we gave in the conservation allowance to cover those who are least able to afford it. Deputy Donnelly did not think there was a case for going after those who are wasting the most. People can differ with my figures if they are not true, but as I understand it Irish Water has stated the top 1% use 22% of the water. This is obviously through leaks as they are not having a bath every two seconds. Catching this would not be a small saving. I understand that according to the figures the top 7% consume six times the average and this is worth addressing.

For me, a principle is we must retain some charge to maintain a conservation incentive. If we do not monitor and measure we do not care. I still hold out hope that in whatever the mechanism and deal being done between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael we will not throw out the baby with the bath water and we will be able to come back and vote in the House on some type of system that is similar to every other developed country in the world. If the French revolutionaries think this is an issue about which they should be on the streets to change the government why are they not doing so? Why do they pay something in France and in every other country?

If the commission to be established could come back with a proposal to the House which includes a right to water, has an element of real fairness and still maintains the principles of monitoring and measuring and stopping and discouraging waste, it might get the support of the majority. I do not know how the commission would do this or how to combine the various wisdom and different motions but I would like to see it try. I would certainly like to see something which starts changing our understanding of our connection with nature because this is what is at play.

It is of fundamental importance to the Irish people that when we turn on our taps we think the water that emerges is pristine, the best, what we are good at and we are proud when we have visitors to this country. I used to work in summer tourism in west Clare and regularly I used to have to tell people not to drink the water. The system could not cope with the bigger number of people, and every time I was in west Clare people got sick. I had them in the van for two days with diarrhoea, which was no fun. This was because system could not cope. According to the latest figures on where we dump raw sewage and where our system cannot cope, it is all around the coast. It is in every tourism spot in the country. How can we hold up our heads regarding being a clean island and bring visitors here if we are one of the worst in terms of care for our environment and looking after our most basic environmental necessity, which is our water?

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