Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I do not think this is the way to do legislation. This Bill arises from the water framework directive that the European Commission adopted 22 years ago. It signalled in 1996 that it would bring forward such a directive. It does not make any sense for it to have taken this long for the State to bring forward this much-needed legislation, for us to have concluded our pre-legislative scrutiny report on this a good while ago and for this all to be shoehorned into a very short period of time, literally 45 minutes with 41 amendments submitted, of which a few are ruled out of order. Some of those ruled out of order are highly significant to the core issues, which means the Oireachtas does not have the opportunity to debate them. For the sake of a few more weeks, this could have been concluded on Committee Stage in early January and passed thereafter very quickly. I do not understand it.

It is more frustrating given that the Minister of State has done some very good legislative work with us, spent much time with us on other legislation and done excellent work on building cross-party support. It cannot be the situation that stuff like this where there is not agreement and which is more controversial gets rushed through, whereas the stuff on which there is more consensus has more time spent on it. All the legislation is important but the Minister of State has shown his capabilities and skills in terms of the legislative process. All the legislation from this Department needs to be treated in the same way and there is no rationale or justification whatever for the State to take this long to bring forward this Bill or to shoehorn Committee Stage into 45 minutes. It makes no sense.

The work we did in the Oireachtas housing committee relates to this amendment. As Deputy Ó Broin said, we got advice from the OPLA and from external organisations with expertise in the area to the effect that the Bill is potentially in conflict with several European Union directives and with European Union law to which we are signed up. That is particularly worrying and it is worrying we are not getting the time to talk that through. Since 2007, the European Commission has been engaging with Ireland on what it considers to be Ireland’s incorrect transposition of the water framework directive. Water abstraction is important, can be carried out for important and necessary reasons and can have huge consequences if it is not managed correctly for our environment, biodiversity and habitats. Given climate change, the impacts of water extraction will increase as time goes on. That is why this is so significant and should be given the proper time and scrutiny.

Only two of 13 recommendations in our joint Oireachtas committee report were fully implemented in this. I am concerned that the thresholds are out of line with other European countries, particularly our neighbouring countries, which have similar conditions in terms of water environments and levels.

We have not been given a good rationale for that. We were told by the Minister of State who was present on Second Stage that there was a scientific basis for that and I asked that this would be shared with us before Committee Stage. I took from his comments that he was assuring us that would happen but I have not seen that a scientific basis for this. If the Minister could comment on that, that would be useful.

Article 11(3)e of the EU water framework directive is clear that member states cannot exempt themselves from controls relating to abstractions or impoundments that have no significant impact on water status. They can only do that when there is a significant impact on water status. That is why the threshold is so important. I am trying to address retrospective issues in this key amendment.

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