Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to share my time with my colleague, Deputy Regina Doherty.

I have always believed a single utility and a charging mechanism are crucial for us to adequately address the deficits in the provision of a quality water and waste water treatment system. As a former councillor, I have seen first hand how the system whereby 34 local authorities had responsibility for water infrastructure did not work. There are estates in south Kildare where raw sewage flows out on the green areas. Some of this has been resolved recently, and some of it is about to be resolved, by Irish Water. Before Irish Water, due to the limited resources of Kildare County Council and the devolved grants it was waiting for from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, all it could manage to do was to pay for very expensive tankering, which never addressed the underlying system and was throwing good money after bad.

In a short time, Irish Water is getting to grips with these issues and bringing about solutions much faster and for less money due to the economies of scale of a bigger entity. Irish Water has delivered 34 new treatment plants, of which eight are for drinking water and 26 for wastewater. Not enough discussion about Irish Water has been about the wastewater element. Irish Water has delivered 73 upgrades, comprising 22 drinking water and 51 wastewater. It has completed 47 water conservation projects with 452 km of pipe remediated.

The impact on people's health and quality of life was a key motivation in changing how we manage our water and wastewater infrastructure. Irish Water has removed 20,000 people from long-term boil water notices and 300,000 people from the EPA's remedial action list.

As a result of the extent of the customer-side leakage that has been identified through metering and the first-fix repair system, it is estimated that a saving of 34 million litres of water is being made each day. This is the equivalent of the entire daily demand for water in County Wicklow.

The future of Irish Water and of the charging mechanism has come under serious scrutiny as a result of the result of the recent general election. We have a very changed Dáil on foot of the election result. No one party can claim victory, or claim to have received a full mandate. Some Deputies in this House have cherrypicked certain issues from their pre-election promises while ignoring others. A new way of business comes with a new Dáil. The days when a Government could drive through its own agenda, having been elected to do so, are gone. Instead, we have a more empowered Parliament, in which consensus will be the name of the game. If and when a Government is formed, Opposition Deputies will need to be aware that life in opposition will have changed utterly. Although the days of grandstanding and populism alone will have gone, I expect plenty of that behaviour to continue. Responsibility will have to be shown in opposition in a more consensus-driven Dáil.

The Deputies who want to abolish Irish Water may well get an opportunity to determine the future of the entity and the charging mechanism through the proposed Dáil committee, but they will also have to suggest how best to address the 950,000 households that have paid their charges to date and how best to treat business people, farmers, people in group water schemes and people with private wells and septic tanks. If the Deputies in question think they can go back to the old system, an inequitable feature of which was that some people paid for water and waste water services while others did not, they can think again. They will have to come off the fence and set out where the money will come from, if domestic charges are abolished, to provide the investment of €1.4 billion that is needed between now and 2021. They can decide through the proposed new budgetary committee whether the health budget or the housing and homelessness budget should be sacrificed to come up with the money that is needed to modernise our water and waste water infrastructure. Maybe they will repeat the mistakes of the past by deciding not to invest enough money in the treatment of water and waste water.

This Dáil term will see a more powerful Parliament. Over the last 60 days, we have witnessed more people expressing a desire to be in opposition than trying constructively to form a Government. Those who think they can sit comfortably on the fence on the Opposition benches need to be put on notice that their populism and their soundbites regarding Irish Water will be put to the test. I look forward to availing of the proposed process to continue to advocate for a single entity to manage this country's water services. That entity should be funded properly so that it can drive the investment that is needed. I look forward to a process that will call out the bluffers and the spin doctors who tell us we can have everything for nothing. I hope for a debate in which the facts will dominate and help to inform public opinion.

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