Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. The Gavin family lives on the site in question. There are 16 in the family. This has been going on for over a year. I have met with everyone in Fingal County Council, including the CEO. They know the situation. They are getting themselves bogged down in a certain legal issue. At this stage, I honestly do not care about that legal issue. This is a matter of health, proper sanitation and the delivery of a basic need, water. This has to be sorted out. The Minister of State has said that special funds were made available during the Covid pandemic. This is a classic example of where such funds should go. They should go to this family to sort out this water issue and get them connected to the mains system. The problems in respect of the legal rights and wrongs of who is on the site can be worked out then. If anything happens to any of these people, they have to take it on the chin. I ask the Minister of State and his Department to step in and get a resolution. I do not want to go to meeting after meeting. I have done that already. I am sick of being told that people will come back to me. I want an answer now. I want this dealt with. It is a terrible shame that there are people sick with cancer on this site. A woman there is pregnant and about to have a child. She is going to have to carry water up to clean herself and so on. These people have no showers. It is all well and good to deliver tanks of water. I do not even know what that is costing. I shudder to think how much it has cost Fingal County Council over the last year or so. This happened in the middle of the Covid pandemic and a lot of people on this site got Covid. I raised this issue at the time and asked that the funds the Minister of State was talking about be used for this purpose, but that was not done. I want answers. I want the Minister of State to get on to the county council and demand action.

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