Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Housing for All is non-existent in County Limerick. I put the question now to the Minister as to why that is. Am I correct in saying that Uisce Éireann, formerly Irish Water, was commissioned as a provider of safe, clean and affordable water and wastewater services for all water users? Water and wastewater services were previously provided by the local authorities. It was designed as a stand-alone national authority for water services. Why is this not happening? We are now ready to start building in our towns and villages for our local people and local economies.

The Minister appeared on a video a couple of months ago with Councillor Kevin Sheahan. People have been looking for a treatment system in Askeaton for 37 years. That was promised by all the Ministers outside of this Government and by this Government. It has been 37 years. The Government promised this when I sat on the Adare-Rathkeale council and has yet to deliver it. It just keeps saying it will happen next year.

Some 37 years have passed and Oola is without a proper sewerage system, Kilfinnane is without a proper sewerage system, Dromcolliher is without a proper sewerage system, as are Askeaton and Abbeyfeale. One can go across the board. How am I supposed to ask people to come in and invest in our towns and villages when the Government will not give us the basic services? When will the Minister make Irish Water accountable for this? We asked it to go out and look at the services in Croom. There are 100 houses waiting to be built in Croom. Irish Water came back to the builders and the developers to ask them to pay Irish Water to do a survey in Croom. We have 100 houses that could be built there tomorrow morning. All we are hearing from the Government is the first quarter and then the second quarter. Irish Water is now coming back to ask people to pay for a survey, which was done before it took it over from the councils. Now there is only 300 capacity left on the system, when they have put down a new road. Before they did that I asked if there was enough capacity to service the area including Eli Lilly which is coming to Limerick, which is ten minutes in the road from Croom. We could service that economy, yet it puts down new roads and does not look at the services we need.

I am looking to service a circular economy. God forbid if a business had to go to the bank tomorrow morning to look for a loan. What is the first thing it will ask? It will ask if the business can give its projections for the next five years. The banks will ask about those projections and how many people will come into the area to service the business. One can say one cannot do it as we have no basic water or sewerage services. The population in our towns cannot increase and this means there is no business. It all comes back to infrastructure, about which I have been asking all the time and which the Government has been promising for 20 years and now for 30 years and it still has not delivered for the people of County Limerick out of all of the other counties.

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