Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Water is a fundamental right, which means that irrespective of income or means the water infrastructure should be funded through general taxation. In this context, I fully support and reiterate the calls of colleagues for a referendum on water infrastructure and ownership vested in the people of Ireland. It is a matter on which I have previously tabled motions when I was a councillor. However, there is another angle to look at. Today, Uisce Éireann sent out a warning about low water levels and asked people to conserve water. Like it or not, we have a leakage problem. We get massive amounts of rainfall at the wrong times and in the wrong places, causing flooding, but we have a scarcity of drinkable water. In that context, in line with so many countries around the world, the principle of paying beyond a fair reasonable allocation of water has already been set. There are numerous examples which I do not have time to discuss in the two minutes I have, but it has been done in multiple countries around the world. At the same time, there are issues. If you give a free allowance to people in a block of apartments, for example, but not to people in their own houses or people in group water schemes, who, as acknowledged, already pay, there will be a differential in terms of what people contribute.

I want to go back to the money back on bottles in the old days. The current scheme is not necessarily fit for purpose. You get 15 cent back on the small bottles but a lot of people out there still throw them on the ground. My young fella and a couple of lads I know from the GAA club were in Croke Park and picked up €30 worth of bottles that were just discarded.

If the deposit were 50 cent per small bottle - we should leave the bigger ones alone because there are issues with people who are recycling at home already - people would be incentivised not to throw those bottles on the ground. It would halve the litter problem overnight if there was a proper charge on those bottles.

Similarly in respect of water, we need to find a way to do this without penalising families or causing any sort of hardship. There are issues but we need to have an open and honest debate. We must accept the principle that once everyone has the fundamental right to water, there have to be behavioural incentives, rather than revenue-raising measures, to encourage people to conserve water. To me, it is pure and simple.

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