Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. Two things became evident from today's hearings. The first is, obviously, very significant systems failures and management failures between the incident that took place in April and the EPA audit in March and the event in October. Not all of the eight recommendations the EPA made in March have been fully implemented. The EPA has made another nine recommendations to Irish Water and is awaiting a response in that regard. I would like the Minister in his supplementary response to give us an assurance that he will take a hands-on role in this, now that the extent of the problem has become manifest, to ensure that Irish Water and Fingal County Council fully implement all the recommendations from the two EPA reports as quickly as possible.

One of the disturbing things about the November incident - the Minister is right about this - is that Irish Water made very clear that what happened yesterday was not a plant failure and that everything that was meant to have been done was done in accordance with proper procedure. The difficulty is that we still have a boil water notice affecting more than 615,000 people in six local authority areas. While capital funding is in place to deal with some of the filtration issues the Minister spoke about, installation of the ultraviolet system the EPA is now recommending would require, in Irish Water's words today, tens of millions of euro of additional money and could take two to three years. Can the Minister give us a commitment that if that is required to reduce the level of risk at this plant, he will actively explore it with Irish Water as well as Fingal County Council?

See this speech in context