Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important debate. People have different positions on the matter, but neither one side nor the other can avoid the facts. While the setting up of Irish Water was a necessary and good thing, it is failing particularly in its duty of care to the people. While we have been sitting here, I have got a freedom of information request back from Irish Water. It has been with Irish Water for two months but a response has just come in now. It contains the facts of what happened when the pipes in Staleen near Donore in Drogheda, County Louth, burst last year and the year before, what Irish Water did and, more importantly, what it did not do. It shows why we need an organisation such as Irish Water working efficiently and effectively with a proper, thought-through plan and in co-operation with all the other statutory and voluntary agencies in order to ensure we have a proper water supply in our country. Irish Water was set up because our water supply needs proper funding, which it does not have. Irish Water was set up because local authorities did not have the capacity or the professional engineering skills, depending on the part of the country or the county in which one lived, to supply the proper and necessary infrastructure, to design that infrastructure or to co-operate with other local authorities. It was, therefore, a very good idea to set it up. Irish Water was set up after due consideration by me in my capacity as a Minister of State at that time, and there are people in this Chamber who know exactly what I said and advised and what happened and what did not.

We must deal with what we have; we must deal with the facts. When the water supply failed in Staleen in 2016, Irish Water found what it called a highly unusual and very rare pipe. Irish Water knew it was 50 years old a year before the pipe burst again, knew it was highly unusual and knew there were no spare fittings for it. What did Irish Water do about that? Absolutely nothing. It had a pipe that was vulnerable, that could not be replaced and that was likely to burst again left metres deep in the ground. What happened when it burst the second time, on Thursday, 20 July, in the evening? For Friday, 21 July, Saturday, 22 July, Sunday, 23 July, and Monday, 24 July, there are no records that have been delivered to me of Irish Water taking any action at all or knowing anything about this. We then find, thankfully, that at 11 a.m. on 24 July - five days into the incident - an incident management team was set up. Irish Water is guilty of not being effective, not doing the job it was set up to do and not being aware or involved in this regard. While up to 60,000 people were without a proper and adequate water supply, at least according to the figures Irish Water has supplied to me, nobody in the company kept a record of anything that was happening up to that time.

On 26 July, six days later, in the middle of a huge water crisis, the HSE contacted the Irish Water incident team to say that the company should have been using the available HSE emergency services. I emphasise the latter because it means Irish Water had not contacted the HSE. The next day, 27 July, seven days after the incident, the great and good in Irish Water were "looking at the previous incident", which had happened a year earlier, to see if there were any lessons they could learn from it. Unfortunately, that is the damning indictment of Irish Water that I am uncovering right now. There is a lot of other stuff in the reply. I do not have time to read all of the information supplied now but I will do so in the future.

What we have here is a body that was properly set up, that was given the resources it needed - or so we thought at the time - that had joined-up thinking, that would bring to the table a professionalism and a skill set at the highest level and that could deal with what it was set up to deal with, namely, to look at where supplies were vulnerable and discover how they could be maintained and improved. If I was to give a mark out of ten or out of 100 to Irish Water in respect of its emergency planning, structure and capacity to react, I would give it zero if I was to give it a mark at all. There are huge issues with Irish Water. I am shocked by the information to which I refer.

Where does this leave us? We hear the argument, almost like theology or a religion, that there should be no charges under any circumstances. The alternative that some people argue for is the free market. What we need is something in between, which is what I thought we were setting up but which has not proven to be the case. While I disagree with many previous speakers, I think Deputy Mattie McGrath was right when he talked about the way people were treated by Irish Water, the arrogance of the company in the way it went about its business, its insistence on using consultants and its lack of proper organisation.

One of the key points I made while the company was being set up was that it needed a proper, professional communications strategy but it did not have that. I warned Irish Water, the Department and the Minister of day, Mr. Hogan, who is now European Commissioner. I told Mr. Hogan that it would be an unmitigated disaster in light of the way matters were proceeding. Needless to say, I was not listened to and hubris and arrogance won out over logic and concern for ordinary people. That is a fact. I am on the back benches today maybe because of that or maybe not. However, I can tell the House one thing, namely, I and others worked very hard to set up this organisation properly in order to ensure that our infrastructure was improved, that it was properly and fairly funded, that people would have a free allowance, and, in particular, that vulnerable people and those who were sick would be looked after. If people wasted water, they would pay for it but they would have adequate water to live an ordinary life. I believe that the volume we were talking about at the time was two bath loads for every person in a house per day, which was to be free and, after that, people would pay. If they had medical problems or other issues, they would be dealt with honestly and sympathetically. Instead, look at what we got.

One of the things I argued in respect of - although, again, the hubris and arrogance won out - related to how Irish Water would function. This goes to the heart of the argument about privatisation. At the time, we believed Bord Gáis had the capacity to bring extra skills into play because it had managed the gas network and, so, should have been able to manage a water network. It also had a very good customer service support system and it had all the professional skills we thought were needed. At the heart of the principle of setting up Irish Water was that it would be an absolutely stand-alone organisation, supported by Bord Gáis while it was being set up, but completely separated as soon as reasonably possible, which at the time was thought to be a year or, at the very most, two years. It would be separate, so people could see what it was, and it would be transparent and accountable. Instead, the decision was made to incorporate it into this other group of companies called Ervia. People might say that is a moot point but it is not; it is a key point. The belief I had in setting it up was that if it was transparent, accountable, stand-alone and separate, everybody could see what it was, everyone would know what was going on and the people could and would trust it. That did not happen. One of the reasons for this was that the games that were going on were power plays between different organisations as to who would be the lead, who would be the manager and who would be the overall director or controller, and all that cant and hypocrisy. All the while, needless to say, the people were losing confidence in the organisation.

I always believed, and believe today, that the question of privatisation was a key issue and that Irish Water must never be privatised. Yet, although it was agreed that would be the case in the discussions I had, it never appeared in the legislation. The day I was handed the Bill in the Seanad, it did not contain what was promised. Imagine that. I know there are others who were Ministers of State and who left without necessarily wanting to go. Was Deputy McGuinness sacked like me or did he just leave?

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