Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ar dtús báire, ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta Cian O'Callaghan as an deis a thabhairt dom a bheith páirteach roimh mo chuid ama féin mar táim ag brath ar bhus beagáinín níos déanaí. I thank the Social Democrats for facilitating me.

I will start by thanking the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for its digest, as usual, produced under pressure.

I stand here as someone who proudly campaigned against water charges and to keep water services within the local authority. It appalled me what we were doing - I watched it as I was an active member - to underfund, underresource and undermine the local authority. We did it on every level. We did it on waste management. The unions stood by and watched it happening at the time. Galway, for example, was the second last local authority to succumb. There is always room for improvement and questions as to where our refuse was actually going, but we had theoretically the best system in the country, in 2000, led by the people on the ground. There was a book published on waste, The burning issue. They led us in relation to zero waste and led a campaign where there were monster meetings in a hotel that at one stage was proudly owned by the State, the Corrib Great Southern Hotel - that is a story in itself. What happened? A fantastic service, with three bins and education liaison officers going out, was taken away and legislation was passed to remove the power for local authorities to pass their own waste management plan.

Parallel with that, we had the water debacle. I was led by the people on the ground, and proudly so. It was a very bad decision to take the water services from the local authority. They were the experts on the ground. I had no difficulty with a national body but trust was missing. We were proven right in relation to it. I refer to the institutional memory and experience on the ground from those people who knew where pipes and leaks were.

We knew at a very early stage that approximately 40% of the water was wasted on the ground. That was not the workers' fault. That was not the fault of the people out there doing their job who responded as to the click of our fingers when we phoned them about leaks and difficulties, and they were out. The problem was that the Government, with the help of the managers in the counties and the cities, successfully undermined completely and set the scene for the privatisation of the water system.

If this legislation is a step to undo that, I very much welcome it. However, I have grown very cynical. I wish I was not. I wish I had more optimism. It is my duty to have optimism and to lead, but it is difficult. In that limited sense, I welcome that we are going somewhere to confirm that this will be a publicly-owned utility. However, I have a problem with the word "company" and shares. I am not quite sure why that is necessary. There is a danger that it could still be sold off in the future. We clearly need a referendum. It is a matter of disappointment to me that we are now discussing this in a vacuum. I would hope, before the Bill goes any further on Committee Stage, that we would have a firm commitment from the Government about when we will have the referendum and the wording of that referendum because we do not want weasel words. We have had enough of weasel words. We want a firm commitment. I could read out the words that the unions have suggested. I will not, but there is any amount of examples that we clearly enshrine that this service is owned by the people for the people. It is the most vital service that we will talk about, along with housing and health. However, water is top of the list.

We have seen what happened in other countries. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan referred to various examples. I saw that in Toronto, Canada, where everything was privatised. The refuse was privatised. Gradually, they had to change that because the private system simply does not work. It is based on profit and greed. We have seen that earlier on in the week. We have seen it regarding the allegations about An Bord Pleanála and we have seen it in the 1,500-page Siteserv report, which I am making my way through and which is horrific.

The private system is there for profit. There is a role for the markets and the private system, but it must be matched by a state that recognises what is fundamental to a civilised society: water, publicly owned, which should never be even up for discussion, public housing across the board to balance the market, public health, public education and public childcare. If the Bill is a step in that direction, and I am really not sure it is, I welcome it.

I welcome the proposed accountability to the Committee of Public Accounts. However, I would like the Minister of State to explain the following. I should understand it myself, having spent a good few years on the committee. I am not sure why the Government proposes to distinguish between Accounting Officer and accounting person. Is that with a view to ensuring more accountability? Even with my experience, I cannot make that one out. As has been said, there were only three recommendations from the housing committee. I do not sit on that committee. I thank it for its work. It made very specific recommendations, only one of which was taken on board, and that related to the Committee of Public Accounts. From my reading of the report, it was the committee that asked for the distinction between accounting person and Accounting Officer, but I am not quite sure why that was.

Then a regulatory impact analysis was carried out and it came up with three options. I never understand when such analyses are carried out why one of the options is to do nothing. The options should be looked at. One of the options is always no intervention, as if that is an option. The two other options in this analysis are, No. 2, to separate Irish Water from Ervia with additional regulatory requirements and, No. 3, to separate them with no additional regulatory requirements. The committee went for No. 2, and the additional regulatory requirements presumably involve the Committee of Public Accounts. Do they involve the regulator as well? Again, I am a little worried about that because such a provision is for commercial companies. I am not sure what status this company will have. Perhaps that could be clarified either tonight or in the process.

Cuirim fáilte roimhe gurb é Uisce Éireann an t-ainm a bheidh ar an eagraíocht seo, ach tá mé beagáinín buartha. I gcónaí bíonn an teideal Gaeilge mar rud diúltach. Tá eagla orm gur rud diúltach é Uisce Éireann. Níl mé ag cur lochta ar bith ar na hoibrithe. I am worried that Irish is often used in a negative sense. I am delighted that the name of the body is to be Uisce Éireann, but very often Irish is associated with negativity, and that is a little difficulty for me. I think of Lá Nua, which is a mental health centre in Galway and is anything but a lá nua in terms of the way the Government has treated it. I think of Tusla. Tús means beginning and lá means day, so the beginning of a new day. The grammar is wrong and the síntí fada are gone and it is nonsense. Of course, Tusla itself has had its own problems, and perhaps that has come from the word. The beginning of a new day, which would be tús lae or tús an lae nua, becomes Tusla. I do not know even how to pronounce it. Again, this is no reflection on the staff, but there is an absence of vision here. We stick in the Irish language rather than the Irish language being part of the solution. I have repeatedly pointed to a book called Irish and Ecologyby Michael Cronin. It is a wonderful little book. It is in Irish and English and it talks about Irish being part of the solution to climate change because of the history of the Irish language and the Irish people being with nature and working with nature. That is just an aside while I have the time, courtesy of the Social Democrats. I have decided to use that time. I despair of the negativity of the Irish word when used that way.

I hope Uisce Éireann works out. I have a little difficulty with the way it has been allowed to develop unaccountably. It is pushed on all sides from every side. It makes sense to have it in the local authority under the new thing the Government is now doing but with the footprint, as has been said, in the local authority. That is where it should be, along with its colleagues in the other services. Moving it out does not make sense to me.

I will turn to practical matters in Galway city. I have mentioned this previously to the Minister of State. The problem is partly mine in that I have not come back to him on Carrowroe. Raw sewage is pumping out from Carrowroe into the sea as we speak. There has been a long campaign, before I became a Deputy and even, I think, before I became a councillor, to erect the suitable infrastructure. Irish Water has a plan to build there. My belief, and that of many other people, is that it is totally the wrong site. To complicate matters even more, the people who own the site have planning permission for a heritage centre and, as I understand it, are proceeding to erect it in Céibh an tSrutháin, just outside Carrowroe. I have mentioned this previously. I raised it as a Topical Issue matter for Irish Water to see sense. There are other sites. I am in trouble for mentioning Ros a' Mhíl but I will mention it again. It is an industrial site, and tá talamh ag Údarás na Gaeltachta ansin. To me, it is a perfect site, but I am no expert. The site they are putting it on, however, is just not going anywhere. Uisce Éireann is pursuing that. That is tunnel vision. It is clearly under pressure to perform but it is not performing.

Then we had the latest stories from Inishbofin. People are not allowed to drink the water there. Irish Water, again, was three weeks late telling them, so people were drinking water that was not fit for consumption. Earlier this morning we had a discussion on a policy for the islands during Oral Questions. Here is another example of problems with drinking water, and all the other Deputies have similar examples from all over the country. It is inexcusable not to tell the people that there is something wrong with their water until three weeks later. I have been through that with cryptosporidium in Galway, where there was a risk assessment way back in 2005 or 2007. We were never told about cryptosporidium, but the officials at management level knew about it. I thought we had left that day behind. We have two problems here: the fact that they cannot drink their water and the fact that they have not been told about it.

As for the Aran Islands, to show the House how we go around in circles, there were two problems. One involved the county council and a toilet and the sewage going into a field, and there was a separate problem with a number of cottages. I cannot tell the Minister of State how many contacts myself and other Deputies have had with the EPA, the county council and Irish Water, going around in circles trying to identify who would take charge and who would do something. I am talking about years and a file a foot high. That is the difficulty with no clear roles, no clear vision and no clear targets.

Galway is one of the five cities identified to grow in population. We have the Mutton Island treatment plant, which should never have gone there. It should have gone to the docks, but it went there. Although management tell us, to be fair to them, that it is fit for purpose and able to cope, I believe it is not because on many occasions we have raw sewage going into the bay from the outfalls because of "rain events", which are supposed to be rare but which happen every day in Galway. Finally, in the east of Galway city we do not have the infrastructure for the development that is planned.

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