Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thought you were all aligned to each other. It does not matter, the group can take the credit for the motion. I will focus briefly on three issues. I tabled a question to Irish Water on providing sewerage services to towns and villages, for example, Kilronan on the Aran Islands, that urgently need a sewerage system. I was told that it must be done on a purely commercial basis. If that were the case in cities and towns and if households and businesses were obliged to pay for them, we would not have any sewerage systems. What is the Minister going to do about this issue?

This Government must be the greatest ever for introducing new schemes that appear attractive on the outside, with lovely shiny wrapping and a little bow on top, but that have a sting on the inside. The Government increased the subsidy for group water schemes but if the subsidy does not cover the full cost of running a scheme for domestic dwellings, the administrators of that scheme cannot go to the householders to collect the balance. Are they meant to have a collection or run a raffle? What is the point of the ruling? The Minister must explain the situation because he has put some people in a very peculiar position. That is typical of the kind of petty rules that are being introduced to stop ordinary people doing practical things and getting on with their lives.

I read a very interesting report on water. The CLÁR scheme used to provide top-ups so that we could bring water to rural houses that do not yet have water from either a group scheme or a public water scheme. Many places along the west coast suffer from that syndrome. The State subsidy per house costs between €10,000 and €15,000. The Minister will tell me that is outrageous but he should remember that water is all they will ever get. Could he indicate the cost of providing water, street lighting and running a sewerage system for an urban house? Would he get much change from €15,000? He surely would not. Why is it not a stated objective of the Government, with the money to back it, to ensure that every house in the country has access either to a public water scheme or a group water scheme? Why is there apartheid in this country when we say in all of the programmes that we will make water available to everybody?

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