John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Last week, when this issue was raised first by my colleague, Deputy Dara Calleary, the impression was that the Minister was not going to meet the companies until today. Whether that was true or not, the fact that he met them as speedily as possible averted a weekend of Deputies being further inundated with anxious queries. The Minister's challenge is, in part, to demonstrate to this Chamber and to the people outside this Chamber that politics can work, this Chamber can work, democracy works, the voices of public representatives work and people do not always have to resort to protest to make their point. Some of the actions the Minister has taken in the last few days have helped to advance that.

The Minister has spent quite a large part of his speech talking about what we need to do. He is the unfortunate recipient of a ball that was not his to begin with because the question is why none of this was done. He talked about the need to educate people in respect of pay-by-weight. It is a case of closing the stable door that Deputy Alan Kelly opened. Where is he? The Minister is left with the consequences of that. One of his predecessors, Phil Hogan, had committed in 2011 to a waiver system. If such a national waiver system had been in place, it would have allayed many of the fears the public felt. It struck me as the Minister was talking about the need for education and the need to inform people that maybe Deputies on that side of the House are finally getting to understand why water charges were such a big issue. If it had been approached in this way from the start - I have said this in the House before, in one of my first speeches - that could have been so different. I am intrigued as to where the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, is tonight.

My colleague, Deputy Cowen, has made most of the points. There is no point in repeating them. The reaction from the public, as I have experienced it, is across all income brackets. It is obviously coming from people who are vulnerable and at a disadvantage, people on social protection and pensioners. The last Government gave social welfare recipients and pensioners a €3 increase and in some of the figures that have been supplied to me, even that paltry €3 would have been wiped out in a couple of weeks by some of those charges. The one thing I have become clear about is that despite all the talk about the economy building and booming, there are many people in Ireland for whom the well is dry, who are doing their sums because they have to do their sums because they are watching their pennies on a weekly basis and this was going to impact them significantly.

I will illustrate one case, which a constituent of mine in Firhouse wrote to me about. I will not mention the company. I know the Minister is familiar with the situation, but some of these statistics have to be put on the record. I know they came up in the Topical Issues debate last week, which I was chairing at the time, when Deputies Cowen and Curran spoke. This constituent says they have used a particular company since the local authority, South Dublin County Council, gave up collecting waste a few years ago. I know the Minister was out there yesterday and was received well, eventually. My constituent is currently paying €19.50 per month, which is a total of €234 per year, and details how much they would be paying based on the average weights of recent bin collections under the new charges circulated by the provider last week. The charges are itemised and go from €234 per year up to €428 per year. I wonder where Deputy Alan Kelly is now.

I wonder how he did not see this. The Minister has seen it and, in fairness, has responded to it. We will continue to monitor it.

How did the companies justify this? The Minister has not told us. What answers did they give him? I presume he asked them a series of questions. Many constituents would like a weights and measures authority to guarantee that the weights and measures quoted on their statements and bills are accurate. Perhaps that could be built into the regulator's position.

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