Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I take issue with Deputy John Lahart's remarks that the previous Government lost its mandate on Irish Water. All parties have agreed that the RTE exit poll taken on the day of the previous general election was highly accurate. The poll found that 5% of those who gave the Fianna Fáil Party their first preference voted on the issue of water. If one were to analyse the specific rationale behind the decision of individual voters to vote for particular candidates, the water factor would be unquantifiable. There is no validity, therefore, in the argument that the majority of Members of the Dáil elected in February oppose water charges or that they were elected to abolish Irish Water. It is impossible to determine whether this is the case and I do not believe the extreme left on this issue.

I will not defend the actions of the previous Government, of which I was not a member. It is clear that the construct of Irish Water was flawed in terms of gaining public acceptance. As a Fine Gael Party Deputy in the previous Dáil, I was unhappy with certain issues related to Irish Water. Just before the previous Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, changed an element of the water charging regime, I voiced my concerns in an interview with RTE, as did many other Deputies on the day in question. The very next day the Cabinet took the welcome decision to change its position.

The bottom line with regard to the outcome of the general election is that the previous Government made mistakes on a multitude of issues, including Irish Water. We are human and the mistakes that Government made cost the careers of dozens of Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies. I have a major problem with the concept that because the majority of Deputies in the previous Dáil passed an unpopular law introducing water charges based on commitments given by Deputy John Lahart's party in the preceding Dáil, we must completely undo and fundamentally change the manner in which a public service utility is structured and funded. There is something inherently wrong with that proposition.

I take a principled position on water charges. Since 2009, charging for domestic water use has been a Fine Gael Party policy which I signed up to in 2009 at local elections when I was re-elected as a councillor, again in 2011, when I was elected to Dáil Éireann, and in 2016 when I was re-elected to the Dáil. While I have no desire to see water charges removed, I accept that the establishment of a commission examining the structure of Irish Water and the charges it applies is a good thing. It is a pity the political cost of the ongoing fallout from the introduction of water charges has been a debate involving the suspension of water charges.

The Minister will meet Commissioner Vella next week.

I have no wish to speak for the Minister, but I imagine the question he will be asking is whether we could be fined, potentially, for our suspension of water charges, because Article 9.4 of the Water Framework Directive applies and the derogation does not apply. Are we going to be fined?

The cost could be similar to the figure Ireland was fined for turf cutting. I understand that figure was €25,000 per day. If so, it would cost the State approximately €10 million over the course of a year or €7.5 million if it was for nine months. I doubt that will be the case and imagine it would be for 12 months. That is a total of €10 million that we could be spending on water services.

I offer some examples. A gentleman who worked for Dublin City Council and Dublin Corporation for 40 years was in my office recently. He was a very nice man. He worked in water services provision for the city council, as well as Fingal and South Dublin county councils at various stages. He referenced the Vartry tunnel in Dublin which supplies approximately 340,000 customers. It is 150 years old but does not have a brick or any cement in it. It is a natural bored hole, literally cut out of the rock, muck and everything else around it underground. It is in danger of collapse. Irish Water and Dublin City Council, on its behalf, must service the tunnel. Those involved have to shut off the water and crawl up a hole in the ground. If there is a collapse, they have to shut off the water and literally crawl up a hole in the ground to try to find it. In 2016 that is a perverse state of affairs. I have seen a report on it. It was provided to me by the gentleman I referred to. The report is on the record of and was debated by Dublin City Council many years ago. The report identified the requirement to fix the tunnel but nothing happened. We have had 50 years of complete and abject failure of successive Governments to invest in water infrastructure, yet the moment we instigate a charging regime that, I hope, was to normalise the investment process, we suspend it for political expediency purposes.

Dublin operates at 98% capacity. We are not having a drought now but if we had a drought in the summer months for a couple of weeks at most, and Dublin's supply from County Wicklow and elsewhere and Fingal's supply from Leixlip and elsewhere dried up then potentially hundreds of thousands of customers would be either throttled, that is to say, there would be a reduction in water pressure, or shut off. Hundreds of thousands of people would be affected. Most of our European counterparts operate on a 15% capacity. In other words, they are operating at 85% and have 15% headroom for such eventualities. We do not. We have 2% headroom.

There are 16 locations throughout the country where, if a person flushes the toilet, the wastewater goes directly out to sea untreated. Two of these are in my constituency in the vicinity of Rush. On three occasions in the past month alone, four beaches in my constituency were closed on the advice of the Environmental Protection Agency on the basis of toilets overflowing and wastewater from treatment facilities ending up in the Irish Sea.

The Dáil arithmetic requires us to adopt a resourceful position. I say as much because if we had not adopted this position, we probably would not have a government. Furthermore, even if we had, a democratic vote of Dáil Éireann would abolish Irish Water outright as well as the charges. That would be the end of that. Instead, an opportunity has been provided to us with Fianna Fáil support, which is appreciated, for the purposes of discussing this matter to ensure that we get it right this time. That is good. I remind the Deputies opposite of an RTE exit poll. It is available and people can download and assess it. According to the poll, only 5% of voters voted for Fianna Fáil based on the issue of water.

I wish to touch on the Water Framework Directive and Article 9.4 in particular. The Commission has given a rather unambiguous response. The so-called Irish derogation would no longer be an option. Having come off RTE "Drivetime" and a discussion with Deputy Paul Murphy, I imagine the response will not put an end to the debate on the derogation. The bottom line is that the European Commission has said that the derogation no longer applies and that we are not in a position to abolish water charges without consequences. I hope this hastens the debate in terms of ensuring that we have a reasonable and rational discussion about a reasonable level of funding and Ireland being the only country in the EU or the OECD that does not have water charges or that did not have water charges heretofore.

I was in the Chair when Deputy Ruth Coppinger took to her feet earlier. She said this Bill was unconstitutional because it went against the EU Water Framework Directive. That puzzled me and, I imagine, anyone with who has read the Ladybird book on the law. The bottom line is that we have a law in place and an opportunity to ensure we frame it correctly in terms of a reduction of taxation for our constituencies and citizens throughout the State. Moreover, we must ensure that the polluter pays, which was the principle adopted with the Water Framework Directive in 2003. The directive set out that by 2010 all EU member states would agree their position on a charging regime. We had a derogation because we did not have such a regime, but we do now.

It is interesting that the Department submitted its first river basin management plan in 2010 without reference to the derogation. I was a Member at the time the debate took place on the question in 2012. The Commission published a report on the Water Framework Directive and Ireland. I remember the arguments in the House and the briefing notes on the fact that there no longer was a derogation. I recall the debate centred around whether it had been signed away as part of the bailout. I believe it was.

We have had 840,000 meters installed throughout the State. What an extraordinary waste of public resources it would be if we were to abolish Irish Water and water charges at the end of this process. Getting rid of 75% of the Irish Water's phase 1 programme for the introduction of water meters would be an incredible waste of resources. Having said that, I remember the statistics from 2014 on the number of properties identified as having major leaks. One property in particular was leaking 1 million litres of water per week, enough to supply the entire town of Lusk in north county Dublin. I recall Deputy Brendan Howlin referenced Enniscorthy, a town with a similar population. The bottom line is that without water meters that would not have been identified, because they were not on-premises leaks. It is good that we are installing meters and it would be an extraordinary waste of our resources if we failed to utilise the meters that have been installed. Whether we agree with it from an ideological perspective, the meters are in place. They cannot be taken out and stored like the e-voting machines, never to be seen again. The bottom line is that they are in place, the taxpayer has paid for them and we should use them.

I made the point about Ireland being the only country in Europe or the OECD that has not had water charges heretofore. We are a unique nation in the sense of our partnership with the European Union. We like to think of ourselves as being special to some degree, but really we are not. We are an incredibly impressive country in terms of what we achieve. This is a small island on the outskirts of Europe, yet we are world leaders in so many areas. We have a highly skilled workforce and a vibrant economy, which thankfully is beginning to come back. However, we still do not accept the basic principle that everyone else pays for water production and that we pay 49.5% marginal income tax. That is quite enough.

A person on a low to medium or an above-average income who is asked, "Will you pay more tax to have proper water infrastructure?" will always answer, "No. I pay enough tax already."

For 50 years our taxation system fundamentally failed to invest enough taxpayers' money into water infrastructure because it was underground and could not be seen. Local authority members were more engaged in fixing potholes, putting in playgrounds and things like that, which is fine. I was a councillor for seven years and accept that is what happened. However, for over 50 years Ministers in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government failed to invest properly.

The suspension of water charges, as envisaged in the Bill, presents a difficulty for me and many others who worked very hard to ensure that this arrangement was introduced in the first place. It was not something we wanted to do, but it was the right thing to do to ensure the burden on taxpayers was reduced in their individual taxation bills which incentivised work. We took over in March 2011 and we hit the bottom in March 2012. At that point this was designed to allow us to move forward, have a sustainable level of investment by the consumer in our infrastructure and see the rewards. We have ramped up investment, from €250 million in 2012 to approximately €550 million this year.

I can state clearly and unambiguously that the suspension of water charges because of political impetus is abhorrent to me. However, I accept that if we had not done this Irish Water would already have been abolished and charges with it. I hope we can have a meaningful debate across the House in a respectful way, as it should be, to ensure we get the best possible outcome from the debate. We should not simply ignore the expertise we are bringing in which, I am sure, will be agreed by the House, because of a political or misplaced ideological position. I understand we do not want to increase the burden on people but we need to face the reality that if we do not continue with a reasonable level of charge, it will result in a curtailment of public services or an increase in taxation.

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