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

I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. I will certainly take it up with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. We may well need to expand the capital budget of Irish Water so it can get more work done around the country. It has been expanded already. Initial indications suggest that Irish Water will underspend its capital budget by €100 million this year, which is a substantial underspend. Perhaps there are good reasons for that, related to Covid-19 and planning delays. There is a certain difficulty in continuing to increase budgets for agencies that cannot spend their budgets. There may be good reasons for it but we would need to explore that before increasing the budget again.

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