Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Members of the House and all political parties this morning for supporting this motion, and the Government for agreeing to accept it.

12 o’clock

Will the Ministers of State, Deputies Noonan and Peter Burke, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, facilitate a meeting with the Regional Group further to this motion where we might be given an unvarnished and unbiased assessment of Irish Water and how we might help?

The past 15 months have proved challenging for the country. Covid has exposed many national vulnerabilities. One of the burning issues that were topical in the pre-Covid economy was water. It is now back on the agenda. Global warming advances the value of water as a national resource. In Ireland, we have had a casual relationship with water, believing that it falls from the sky and just meanders into our faucets, but that is not the case. Water is a resource and it needs to be managed and paid for. We need not make a scientific conundrum of the issue, but we nevertheless must not think of it as a simple activity that can be achieved for nothing. Water and its supply, filtration and treatment have significant implications for the future economic well-being of the population.

We have an overburdened water supply and sewerage infrastructure that is creaking at the seams. We have continuing problems in trying to manage water hygiene for domestic and commercial purposes as well as providing efficient waste water capture and treatment. All of these activities require ongoing investment. The adequate provision of clean water and the associated management of waste water treatment is having a significant effect on the budgets and development plans of our local authorities. Water and waste water services provision is now dictating housing location, housing densities and housing affordability and is having a detrimental impact on rural planning and development, as new regulations are significantly adding to the cost of building houses, including one-off developments. I am aware of a builder in my constituency of Waterford who was asked to pay a connection fee of €30,000 per unit by Irish Water to add extra housing to an existing developed site. The reason given was the cost of upgrading sewerage piping. When the developer told Irish Water that this would make the development unviable, he was told that Irish Water's remit was only to recover the costs of its project. This scenario is playing out in every county and is having a significant effect on regional planning.

I do not fully understand the cost structures that exist within Irish Water, but I understand that there is a cost price after which the value of something has to be questioned and often cannot be justified. Water provision is not a luxury purchase in this country. Rather, it is a necessity and its competitive provision is directly related to our economic competitiveness nationally, particularly as an exporting nation. We need adequate water treatment and its provision to be economically competitive and socially sustainable. We need a transparent cost structure in Irish Water that underpins water service provision regardless of in which part of the country one lives. We must never privatise our national water services, but we must utilise all of the learned efficiencies and intersect with private sector contractors to ensure that the State gets maximum value for money in the provision and development of water and waste water services.

In regional and rural Ireland, we need planning authority acceptance of private water schemes and private effluent treatment systems and a willingness to incorporate reed bed filtration as a suitable effluent treatment for small housing clusters. "Homeworking" is the new buzzword in the economy, but we cannot have suitable homeworking without addressing many of the country's infrastructural gaps. The provision of water and waste water services is a significant such gap. We need to reassess the importance of adequate and well-managed water systems in our towns, villages and communities. We need the Government to reassess the investment it is willing to make in this precious commodity such that the commodity can deliver the greatest financial and social benefits to the people of Ireland regardless of where they live. This is the basis of the Regional Group's motion. I thank all Members for respectfully accepting it and I look forward to engaging with the Government and Regional Group colleagues on the matter.

I will make a final comment. Two thousand years ago, the Romans had an efficient waste water and water supply management system. Surely with all of the technology now available to us, we can achieve the same outcome.

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