Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate we need to invest more in our water network. We are currently preparing the national development plan, NDP, review, which will set out the level of public investment in all forms of infrastructure between now and 2030. It is the update, or refresh, of Project Ireland 2040. We expect to complete that in the next few months. As part of that, we are giving consideration to additional funding for Irish Water.

However, there is a difficulty, though not an insurmountable one, in that Irish Water is a State agency on the public balance sheet. When it comes to allocating money for Irish Water, it has to compete with the health service, education and justice for capital funding. The model we previously proposed was that it would be a publicly-owned utility, a semi-State company like the ESB, for example, which would be able to borrow against its own balance sheet and assets using income from charges. That would have created much more money to invest in water and we could have done much more than we now can do, but that decision is made and the ship has sailed on that issue.

I appreciate the point made by the Deputy. We will do our best to find additional capital for Irish Water over the next couple of years but there is an opportunity cost associated with it. That money cannot then go into housing, public transport, health or education. While we may be able to borrow at the moment at very low interest rates, we still have a borrowing limit. We expect the European Central Bank to start unwinding quantitative easing around March next year and fiscal rules to be reimposed in 2023.

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