John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I would like to reinforce what my colleague Deputy Brabazon said. A number of backbench TDs were actually chatting about this recently. In the old days, there were six houses connected to a sewerage pipe and in the modern context, there might be up to ten. As the Deputy said, very often it is at the last house on that connection where a blockage occurs. In the old days South Dublin County Council, for example, which is my own local authority, would come out and facilitate the resident, unblock the pipe, bring the tanker out and everybody was happy. It might do that on a few occasions. When Irish Water took over responsibility for the service, it ceased doing that and in most cases would say the fault was on the private or residential side.

In the last Dáil, the former Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, brought forward what could be described as omnibus legislation in the form of a transport (miscellaneous provisions) Bill. These come up once every five or six years when a Department gets to renew and refurbish a whole load of legislation under its aegis. What Deputy Brabazon mentioned and what I am talking about in relation to that connection issue only needs a line or two in legislation basically saying that if there is a blockage in a chain of residential houses, everybody connected to that chain must be informed, either by the local authority or Irish Water, that there is a blockage and that everyone on the chain is responsible for it. Everyone is responsible for remedying it, not just the final house on the pipe. We need to do that. Local authorities used to do that, not on a statutory but on a voluntary basis if there was a group of six houses connected and the last one was getting Dyno-Rod or a similar company out to unblock it at a cost of hundreds of euro. It is a small thing and I urge the Minister of State to keep it in mind for an omnibus piece of legislation if such comes along.

I contested the by-election in 2014. It will probably go down in Sinn Féin folklore as the one that got away. The party went into that by-election as odds-on favourite to win. It went into the election with Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, former Deputy Gerry Adams and Deputy Pearse Doherty all saying that they supported water charges and would pay their water charges. Then Deputy Paul Murphy won an overwhelming victory. Certainly the Fianna Fáil Party took account of the public mood at that time and in 2016 an Oireachtas committee was set up specifically to deal with the issue of water charges. We abolished water charges but I favour charging for excessive use. It is the responsible thing to do. I do not think it is a back door to water charges and I would not tolerate or countenance it being such. People who abuse water must be dealt with.

Various points were made about charges and costs. I will relate an experience I had recently. We tend to think there is a single water utility. There was a leak outside my own home which began on 6 January. I reported it to Uisce Éireann, as did my neighbours but the water flowed from 6 January until a week ago. Uisce Éireann came out to have a look at it. It was coming from different areas and it thought the leak might be on the private side and require a first fix but it did not. Then South Dublin County Council got involved and was the most efficient, actually. I received three or four letters from Uisce Éireann for neighbours of mine, sent to my address. I hope it is listening. Its processing of this issue was particularly poor. It was not because I was a resident but I did write to Uisce Éireann as a TD first, on behalf of other residents. I do not think I actually got a formal response, although neighbours did. The way it responds to queries is problematic. In the end, the crack was in a Dublin City Council pipe that was bringing raw mains water to the treatment plant in Ballyboden. I did not think the city council or any other local authority was in charge of anything except surface water these days and I thought Uisce Éireann was responsible for everything else. There is a myriad of organisations involved - for that one leak, we had South Dublin County Council, Uisce Éireann and, finally, Dublin City Council involved. Riddle me that one, if you can.

That said, there are some very positive developments too. A number of years ago I visited Ringsend just before the second phase of the water treatment plant was built. It is a pretty impressive piece of infrastructure. I remember being told when the first water treatment plant opened, and it has stuck in my mind ever since, that the plant treats the equivalent of the flow of the River Dodder over a 24-hour period. That is a lot of sewage coming in and going out of the plant.

Uisce Éireann has much to do. This may sound parochial but in my experience, it has never replaced the local authorities. In my 26 years in elected public life, the local authority was always efficient and responsive when it came to queries. My experience of Uisce Éireann is that it needs to up its game. To any Uisce Éireann executives who might be watching, I am not saying it needs to up its game when dealing with politicians. I am a public representative, elected to represent real people and I bring real queries to its door. It is very hard to interface with the organisation and getting responses from it is a tedious process.

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