Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is important to be accurate. This commission will have worked for five months, not three. The people we have asked to serve on it are knowledgeable, successful and busy individuals. This has taken up a lot of their time, I suspect. Approximately half of them are not Irish but the chairperson makes the majority Irish. They are all experts in their fields and if we want to get good quality people, the least we can do is cover the cost of their turning up for meetings. The secretariat and the research staff are needed. The commission has to avail of legal advice. That money has not yet been spent. That is what we have budgeted for in order to ensure that we can get a professional job done.

This is one of the most divisive political issues with which this Oireachtas has had to deal in recent years and that it will have to deal with in the future. We are talking about a €5 billion investment programme for Irish Water over the coming few years. It makes sense to spend a little money to ensure that we give the process the best possible opportunity of creating some political consensus around this divisive issue. That is how we have approached it. This is not my committee. I am not going to dictate how many times it meets, who it asks to appear before it, etc.

My understanding is that we can set it up next week, but we can discuss the matter further. That is the message I received from the Fine Gael Whip. Whether it is formally set up next week or the week after, it will still happen well in advance of the report coming out. The latter is important because I believe the report should go directly from the expert commission to the new committee in order that it can get on with its work and that it is not seen as being "handled" by Government in the period between the finalising of the report and its going to the committee. That is very consistent with the confidence-and-supply agreement. This is the process that is under way that I hope will produce a good outcome. The sooner that committee is set up, the sooner we can get on with it.

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