Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is very disappointing that we are having this debate a year after 90 of us were elected to this Chamber by the people on foot of the Right2Change-Right2Water campaign. That was probably the biggest mass mobilisation of people on the streets that I have ever seen, apart from probably 1981 hunger strike. In my city of Limerick we had rallies of 10,000 to 15,000 people on the streets. Communities all across the city and county came out onto the streets, and some villages in County Limerick had, as was described to me by local residents, the first ever protest in their areas. It was a massive issue. We are here a year later, despite the fact that 90 candidates were elected on the position of abolishing water charges.

I am not sure which of the speeches the Taoiseach made today was the most offensive, whether it was the comments he made on water or those he made on the attempt by the people of Catalonia to have a referendum to determine their own future. It would not be the first time that Fine Gael has done that. I am aware that my own council disgraced itself in 1930s when Barcelona fell to Franco's people and it sent him flowers and congratulations. We all know what happened after that: Franco's massacre of people on streets.

With respect to the Taoiseach's comments today about the people who protested about water charges, he should not go there. The campaign was not just about water. It was about people moving on from austerity. People were fed up with what the way everything went. We all saw the battering that the Labour Party - its members are not even present for this debate - got in the election, a deserved one as far as I am concerned. It abandoned its own core people. Its members were elected on foot of promises. We saw more of that on the streets today when students asked the party's members to leave the demonstration over the issue of tuition fees.

We have a democratic mandate to abolish water charges. Why are we debating this issue a year after the election when we should be talking about other important issues. During the past month, 902 people were on hospital trolleys in the University Hospital Limerick in my constituency. Those are the issues we need to be talking about and on which we need to have special debates. I tabled a Topical Issue matter on that issue for tomorrow and hopefully it will be selected.

It perplexes me as to why the Government will not agree to have a referendum on water charges. My colleagues have also spoken about that.We will probably have a referendum year next year when we will have six of seven referenda, important ones, including the repeal of the eighth amendment, which I will be supporting. Why can we not have a referendum to keep water services in public ownership? This is what we all believe in. I think it was Deputy Ó Laoghaire who said that he does not believe that the Minister of State's Government wants to privatise water services, but others do. This is what has happened in other countries. It starts with a Bill being introduced. Water will be one of the most sought after natural resources in the world. It will be a commodity that will be very profitable and ordinary people will be forced to pay for it.

Ireland has very little water poverty at present, and we want to keep it that way. We will campaign to ensure that. One of the first campaigns in which I got involved was in Limerick in 1990 when we were campaigned against water charges. A picture carried in the Limerick Leaderunder a section on memories from the past showed us protesting outside City Hall at that time, burning water bills that had been issued. Believe it or not, my nephew, who was 18 months old at the time, was summoned to court. Obviously, the judge agreed that a 18 month old child should not have been summoned to court. There was a mass mobilisation of the people in Limerick in 1990s and there was another one a number of years ago. People voted in the election in 2016 on the basis of water charges. They elected us to this House and they would not expect us to be still talking about water charges a year later.

Many people marched because they wanted a referendum on water charges and to keep water services in the ownership of the people. It might not be the Minister of State's Government that wants to privatise water services, but the people are definitely worried that it could happen down the line.

My council in Limerick has had a very good record of dealing with water leaks. The much quoted statistic is that more than 40% of the leaks have been fixed. The council did good work on tackling the leaking pipes during recent years before Irish Water came on the scene. The council staff had considerable experience, they were very good at their job and able to fix the pipes. I will give an example, however, of where that has not worked recently. Many people will be familiar with the Hyde Road in Limerick. A person heading towards the city centre from the west side of the city would go up the Hyde Road. We were told for many years that this road always floods in heavy rain and that nothing could be done to fix it. We got the council eventually to fix it, but the people who first came out did not have the experience to know what the problem was. I took a picture of them trying to fix the leak and put it up on Facebook. I was contacted by a former council official who said that from his knowledge of when he worked in the water services, they should have been 15 ft away from they were working and they would have done the job properly. The people who were contracted from Irish Water did not have the skills or the knowledge of where the pipes were leaking. They said they fixed the problem, but it turned out that they did not. When it next rained a few days later, people's homes were flooded again, but then it was just a working-class area in Limerick and it had been allowed to flood for 40-odd years. When the council did listen to what I and other people told them, namely, that they needed to move and work 20 ft across the road, Irish Water officials came out and listened to the people who had the knowledge, and who unfortunately do not work for Irish Water, who told them where to go to fix the pipe. That has solved the problem in that area where there had been flooding for years.

I was at the Pride rally in Limerick last July when I got a phone call to say that there was flooding in Bengal Terrace in the city. I thought there could not be flooding there because it not near a river. It is on a hill up by the graveyard. I went to visit the homes and about a dozen of them had been flooded, all with different levels of damage. Those people are still not back in their homes. Some of them left last week as the work is just about to commence. Irish Water was very late on the scene. Limerick council emergency staff came out to help those people get accommodation. Some of what happened was shocking because there was nobody from Irish Water that we could talk to on that Saturday. People who were homeless were presenting at hotels. These were ordinary working people who woke up one morning to find their homes had been flooded. One elderly lady had been sleeping in a downstairs room and she was lucky not to drown. Some of those people had to stay in emergency accommodation in the local hotel, which unfortunately would not take the booking the council had made for them because they did not have the credit card in the name of the council and there was nobody to talk to in Irish Water.

Some of them had to stay in emergency accommodation, which was the local hotel. Unfortunately, however, the hotel would not fulfil the booking the council had made for them because they did not have the credit card in the name of the council and there was no one available to speak to in Irish Water. I rang the hotel twice and the hotel told the council that I should not be ringing it. The council official then went out to the hotel herself with her own credit card and offered to pay for it. She also had the council's credit card with her but the hotel would not take it. It was a big mess and the people ended up having to go to a different hotel. We got them into that hotel and the council official, who was a brilliant star on the day, ensured the people got into the actual rooms before she left. She went beyond the call of duty.

The reason I raise the issue of Bengal Terrace is that Irish Water is not accepting any responsibility for the flooding. A pipe burst outside one of the doors and there was a massive rush of water in through the door which destroyed a number of homes. Irish Water is refusing to accept responsibility because, it says, the pipe never broke before. How is that logical? The pipe never broke before so it is not Irish Water's problem. These people are still waiting to get back into their homes. The Minister of State knows how long it can take to fix up a home that has been flooded.

I come back to what I said at the outset, which is one of the main reasons people marched, would not pay their water charges and sought to defeat them. People rightly believed that perhaps not this Government but a Government to come would seek to privatise what is a valuable resource. That is a huge concern that has not been addressed in the Bill. Why will the Government not give us a referendum? I ask the Minister of State again if the Government will consider giving us one. As I said, people marched in their thousands. These were the largest demonstrations that many younger people will have seen. We elected a number of Deputies to this Dáil to abolish water charges and we have not respected their democratic wish.

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