Tom Brabazon (Dublin Bay North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As we all know, water is the basic element of life. It is absolutely essential to all aspects of life. I welcome the commitment in the programme for Government to invest heavily in our water infrastructure, which is critical and needed to deliver additional new housing units across our capital city and the country. I welcome that the strategic funding has a multi-annual spend of €16.9 billion up to 2029, a huge amount in anyone's book. Other speakers underscored the necessity for us to catch up on the underinvestment in our water infrastructure for many decades. I think everyone in this House accepts that this an absolute necessity. Having said so, I will make some general points in relation to Irish Water, beginning with the issue of the provision of additional housing. I agree with the proposal that there should be some statutory deadlines enforceable against Uisce Éireann to ensure timely delivery of houses, particularly on sites where more than 100 units can be delivered, and to remove that roadblock from housing delivery. We can deliver this reasonably quickly in my opinion.

Deputy Ó Broin mentioned we should appoint additional judges to shrink the time for judicial reviews. We agree with that in principle; however, it is not possible for us to legislate how quickly a judge can hear a case or how long it should take him or her to hear or deliberate on it. This is sailing close to us telling the other branch of the State how to do its business. We are treading on difficult constitutional waters there and should be careful. Given the increasing complexity and interaction between Irish and European law, cases involving judicial review tend to be quite complex and multifaceted. They tend not to be simple, single point cases but based on a multiplicity of points across EU and Irish jurisprudence. Accordingly, I do not think that statutory timelines putting guns to heads across in the Four Courts will help in this regard.

Other issues I have come across regularly from constituents include instances of a number of houses on a sewer line, as Deputy Healy mentioned, and when there is a break in the line or one house repeatedly causes difficulties blocking the lines, causing misery for neighbours, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes consciously. These problems are often experienced where raw sewage backs up in one person's garden, causing absolute misery for those people. Often, it is the home that does not have the shore outlet that is responsible for causing the blockage. It is often the person who has sewage coming up into their garden who has to hire a company to come in privately to unblock the blockages. This is patently unfair and needs to be looked at.

On top of this, there are also issues where the sanitary services Acts seem to impose an obligation on householders to be responsible for pipework that is not on their property and extending out into the middle of the road. This is a statutory imposition and is frankly perverse and unfair. The legislation imposes responsibility on private householders to maintain what is in essence a public sewer out into the middle of the roadway. We need to look at this legislation and ensure the scheme is made fairer. There are often situations where the local authority, for example, has to come out and carry out CCTV inspections of the sewers because the tree root system on the public verge side has broken the sewage pipe and caused leaks and backups into private property. This is where serious pressure is brought to bear on local authorities and Irish Water to intervene. Often, first responders from Irish Water say it is not its responsibility and it is the responsibility of the householder. The first line of defence is to say liability does not rest with us, it rests with you as the householder. This is despite service level agreements between the local authority and Uisce Éireann. We need to extend the first fix sewage pipe breaks on properties, particularly those that are localised. We need to ensure all households on a line are obliged by law to contribute to unblocking blocked sewers where it is their responsibility.

The other issue is the massive commercial charging by Uisce Éireann on primary and secondary schools. I spoke to a school principal of a DEIS 1 school last week in connection with this issue. They anticipated their bill for water would be between €40,000 and €60,000. This means one branch of the State pays another, which creates an unneeded circle of bureaucracy.

I listened to some of our colleagues on the Opposition benches earlier accuse the Government of not supporting their Bill to make permanent the abolition of water charges. The Opposition is well capable of taking legal advice and does so on a regular basis when it suits its agenda. It seems to me this issue is being used as a political football to score points against the Government. I am not a fan of water charges personally. I do not like them, to be honest. However, Sinn Féin and others are well aware that the water charges directive comes from European law. It is not within our capacity in this House to change it.

We must obey it. We are possibly in breach of the directive as it stands.

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