Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Since I became involved in politics and especially since I went to live in rural Ireland, having grown up in a city where water, street lights, pavements, sewerage and all these services were taken for granted, it always surprised me that fundamental, basic services are seen as too expensive and unaffordable for rural people.

There are four services that should be in every house in the country. The first of them is electricity. Thankfully, we have achieved that. We achieved it at a time when this country was relatively poor and when it was much slower and more difficult to provide fundamental infrastructure. The second is broadband. We will put fibre into every premises in the country. It is a brave decision, on which I disagreed with the policy of my own party. I absolutely supported what the Government of the time did, in saying fibre broadband would go to every premises and rather than to shilly-shally, that the right job be done. The third service is nearly complete, that is, a decent road that can be travelled to every house. We do not need motorways, but we need a road with a decent surface. It has been done in most places and the remaining places are being done under the local improvement scheme. The scheme is not ideal, but at least the roads are getting done. The fourth service is water. A fundamental thing that everybody needs is clean - as it is called in jargon - potable drinking water. For some reason, there is a lacuna here and the system keeps balking at providing for the 10% of houses that do not have public water supplies or a group scheme connected to their premises.

There is much talk about a referendum on water. I presume that when people talk about a referendum on water, they are talking about the right of every household in the country to clean drinking water and that it be central to this referendum. Only 10% of houses do not have this service. When we look at the spend - the Minister of State might have it - on water and wastewater in this country, it is approximately €2 billion. The vast majority of that goes into wastewater, which only serves 70% of the people. I have a great answer before me, which is full of jargon, to a previous question I raised. Time and again, we are told it is not economically possible. Basic services are very rarely economic, in the economist's view of the world. They are choices for society. I am suggesting the Government make a decision that every house in the country have those four fundamental services, that is, water, electricity, broadband and a road. If we could say we had achieved that - this is 2023 - we would have done something very basic in this country.

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