Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this. I will first say I am the chairman of a group water scheme. We run it ourselves voluntarily. We do not need Irish Water or anyone else, thankfully; we do it ourselves. There is a great community in our area. I want to make that clear. I probably have an advantage over most people where I would have dug and laid it, filled it in and scoured it and done everything with water down through the years.

I listened to the speakers and the debate earlier on the motion from the Regional Group Members. As I said before, EU law over the years has broken things up and it is heading this way with Bord Gais. It was heading this way with many things but it has failed. Water, energy, light, fuel coming into a country, and health, need to be held and we need to ensure those basic necessities are in State control. If not, communities can do their own thing as we are doing, but in general it is necessary for a country to have that security of supply. There is a big problem with water. We had a few fine days, damn all to be frank about it, and then I saw on the television there were hosepipe bans and the need to conserve water. We are on life support if that is how our water system is. The first thing this Government should do is to show faith to workers because there is a debate going on that everyone is aware of. I understand that is not on this Bill tonight but the first thing the Government should do is say it is prepared to put that to the people in a referendum to keep it in State ownership. That is paramount for anybody and needs to be part of any negotiations for workers’ security.

There is a current debate about whether water should be brought to Dublin. In my opinion there should be four spurs coming out of the pipe that is talked about for Lough Derg. For balanced regional development there should be one to the west, one to the south, one towards the north and one towards the east, for the simple reason that at the moment there are 66 plants in Leinster on life support in the line of water. Forget about Dublin. They are in serious trouble because the sources they have are not good enough. That is the bottom line. Put Dublin in on top of that.

Leaks need fixing. Someone said earlier that meters should not be installed. Forget the debate about paying or not paying. The reason for putting in a meter for anyone who ever worked in water is so that you can look at the little red wheel going around and it tells you if there is a leak in the area. On a half-inch pipe this enables about 3,000 gallons of water a day to be saved if it is bad leak. There is no point in wasting water.

Something else needs to be done on which the Government should be proactive. At the moment another EU piece of legislation – God bless them – on water abstraction relates to water coming from rivers and lakes, which will be controlled by the State. The water will come along the river and into the lake and on further again to be taken out somewhere to be treated. We are taking it up and putting it through the full treatment system, which costs millions of euro throughout the country. We are going to UV it, chlorinate it, and then send it back around again. That is sound, people need that done for themselves, but the cattle will also get chlorinated water. If Johnny Farmer decides to put a pump on the river or the lake he will be a criminal. That is not what we should be doing. We should actually give a grant to Johnny Farmer to bring water out from the river, to put in the rings and make sure that he pumps it without having to UV it, treat or chlorinate it. That would be common sense especially in an energy crisis when we are pumping it that way to come back this way to go down there and drink it again.

EU legislation comes in here and is not being thought through. What we are doing is madness at times. Cattle do not need chlorinated water yet around the country most of them are drinking it. In fairness to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, there are some grants under targeted agriculture modernisation schemes, TAMS, for rainwater harvesting and that is a good thing. I am in favour of that and we need to do it.

The Bill that is coming in on splitting Uisce Éireann from Ervia is a good thing because I have worked in water over the years. When we were putting in a local scheme the rates were tight and basically it was a transport box, a tractor, a JCB and a few people. That was the phrase we used. I know it was more technical than that but the phrase was that the job was tight. Once Irish Water came in and Ervia had influence on it, the Lord God there were so many people in offices that you had to have a bit of paper for this and a programme going ahead and every type of stuff was dreamt out of the sky on how to do a job. The taxpayer is paying for it, and that is the problem. We have now probably raised the price of the same meter by five to six times what it costs.

It even came down to saying that if you had a white van, you could put Irish Water across it. That all comes, in my opinion, from the Ervia side of it. I remember when Irish Water was set up and I pay tribute to people such as Jerry Grant who started, as they say, at the bottom and who worked his way up. He was a practical person in Irish Water, as was Michael O'Leary, in fairness to them. There are good people within Irish Water.

There is one problem for us, however, as politicians at the moment. If you have a leak, with no disrespect intended you might have someone who might not know a lot about water and you may have no idea what that person is saying to you. You are trying to solve a leak and to get a leak allowance. I even saw in the past few days where someone told my office that where a leak was within the house or building, a leak allowance cannot be given. The leak has to be from the meter on the pipe on the way into the house. If it is in the floor underneath, where you did not see it, lo and behold that is your tough luck. Anyone who says that has not got a bull’s clue about water in their life.

Another thing they have said is that if you have not reported the leak within three months, the company will not deal with it. That is not the way to treat people. If someone comes and fixes a leak, people will be more proactive. There should be an education in this country about encouraging people once a fortnight or every three weeks to look at their meter or the company should make it easier to do so. This is because with the new gear that is out there, you can go along the road and read the meter from the computer and you are putting a little block over it. You would need a magnifying glass now to look down to find where it is working. The company should make it easy for people and work with them. People will conserve water if there is any way they can do that.

In addition to that, Irish Water needs a very significant budget for many years to come. If you look at the ratios of money spent in Dublin as against the countryside, it is significantly different. As has been said earlier by many Deputies, a great number of towns have no wastewater treatment or sewage plant or anything like that and of course the farmer gets kicked about it. Sooner or later, whatever is in the town will straggle its way down to the river but as the farmer is the other side of the river, he or she will be blamed for this. I welcome what I see in Ahascragh at the moment, where the company is finishing a job. That is great. I also know that an upgrade is coming in Ballymoe, County Galway. I will tell Members the reason. It is because of a river called the Island river. The media will talk about all of these farmers, what they are doing and not doing, and they are wrong no matter which way they turn. The facts are that this river is one of the most pristine in Ireland. When it comes along and meanders through all the agricultural land, it is tested every way. There is a meeting next Monday night where the results will be given. It is one of the most pristine rivers but when it comes into Ballymoe, because the upgrade had not been done on the sewage treatment plant there, the river is damaged there. That is what is happening in Wexford, Kildare, Connemara, Kerry, Donegal and wherever. It is "not in my back door" stuff. That aspect needs to be looked at.

On the water abstraction issue, we should be looking at it in a totally different way than basically saying to a farmer that we want to know how much water he or she is taking out and all of that. No one goes pumping water for the crack up and down the road.

The other thing that is required is that companies such as Irish Water need to tighten up on the rigmarole it is involved in and this Bill might help it in that regard, because Ervia was obsessed with paperwork, procedures and all such things.

The one thing that Irish Water needs to do in the talks that are going on at the moment is to ensure, as has been pointed out earlier, it recognises there is a wealth of knowledge. I know the caretakers, for example, around our country. You can ring them at any time and in fairness, they are mighty people. We need to ensure that those people are happy at their work, whether it is with the council or is with Irish Water. If you talk to them, they are all reasonable people. Many of them are afraid that there is not a future. The first step for the future is to give reassurance about something by ensuring that a referendum is done on water and that such an opportunity is there.

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