James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Ceann Comhairle back. It is great to see him and I wish him well.

I will make a few points concerning my interpretation of the situation with our water supply. My report in this regard is not very good. Moving away from the parochial and putting a more national focus on the subject for one moment, this situation stems from continuously devolving responsibility away from democratically elected individuals to independent State agencies. Although there are many merits to doing this, when it comes to responsibility for failure it is incredibly difficult for us to get answers to questions. I heard several Deputies referring during this debate to the lack of answers, whether through parliamentary questions or in writing, from Irish Water regarding concerns in our constituencies.

My view is that Irish Water simply does not care. It depends on where outages happen and the priorities of the organisation when it comes to repairs. Looking at the water outages in Cork East, we have had several that have been exceptionally questionable. In Whitegate, for example, thousands of residents have been repeatedly put on boil water notices for long periods of time over many years. Despite years of representations having been made, Irish Water is only now coming forward with a plan to deal with this situation. People will have to wait for yet another two years. This is just not good enough. This situation has been replicated across other areas. Killavullen, a small village, for the first time ever now has a situation where decreasing water quality is starting to cause outages there and in other parts of north Cork. Concern is growing about what the priorities of Irish Water are, while there seem to be an ever-growing number of cases in my constituency of Cork East regarding areas that Irish Water has responsibility for. It is simply unacceptable.

Also concerning Irish Water, why is it not being properly brought to answer questions about the areas of the organisation's failure when it comes to providing serviced land with water supplies for new housing developments? My constituency has towns, with which the Minister of State is familiar, that could easily accommodate an extra 500 or 1,000 housing units if the wastewater infrastructure and drinking water supplies were put in place to provide serviced land, that is, if Irish Water chose to go and do this. In the midst of perhaps what is one of the greatest housing crises this State has faced since its foundation, this is not being done. It is, quite frankly, outrageous that I have to come in here to talk about this matter and that these opportunities are not being seen in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I have commented umpteen times on the Mitchelstown wastewater situation. I have lost count at this stage of how many times I have mentioned it. Irrespective of all that, I have still failed to get anyone within the organisation to come forward with a concrete plan to deal with this situation.

I want to raise other issues as well. Of course, Irish Water has responsibility for the lack of provision of sewage treatment. We are lucky to have long rafts of scenic areas along the south coast of my constituency. There are a number of locations where plans were drawn up in the 1990s - before I was born - to deal with some of the sewage issues and to give people pristine coastal waters. Cork County Council had the foresight and the vision to come up with plans to deal with these areas but there is still an unacceptable outflow of sewage into the sea. When Irish Water was created in 2013, it came along, curtailed these plans, ripped them up and never even looked at the revised version in areas around Shanagarry and Garryvoe. I want to put that on the record of this House.

If the Minister is listening back to the debate after today - I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will refer these points to him - I want to make the point that Irish Water has a lot of work to do to increase water quality in the east Cork area. They have undertaken a number of projects. I am not failing to acknowledge that. They have done considerable work in Cork Harbour. This comes back to their priorities. Are their priorities the cities or are they merely abandoning rural Ireland? If one looks at my constituency - I can give the Minister of State many examples here today - it will be clear that they have failed to deal with large rural areas across north-east Cork in my constituency. Of course, they are ignoring ongoing problems in rural areas.

It all comes back to this. We need to be careful about what the next ten years in this country will look like if we are to keep creating more independent State agencies to do the work that politicians in the past would have been hands-on within local authorities in dealing with. I am very concerned about it because the structures that are in place when it comes to accountability are just not good enough.

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