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

I met with the CEO and senior team of Irish Water just in the past two weeks. As the Deputy can imagine, these issues are brought to my attention all the time. Often, smaller towns around the country that need to expand cannot because waste water services are not available. There is industry that cannot be built because water is not available. In some cases, housing developments cannot proceed because water services are not available. In fairness to Irish Water, it pointed out to me that it has a pretty massive capital programme under way at the moment of about €1 billion a year. The capacity to go beyond that is actually limited, given the availability of materials, staff and so on. It has a very ambitious capital programme and it is being implemented. I just appreciate that it is not happening quickly enough for a lot of people.

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