Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

We will be sharing time. We will each have three and a half minutes.

There is a housing crisis. We need to deliver houses. I am offering my services to the Minister, as I have offered them to other Ministers, to help to deliver houses. I do so in light of the experience I have and the knowledge I have that Irish Water is not providing value for money. It will not deliver the infrastructure needed to deliver houses. That is a fact. With all the millions and billions it is quoting the Government to deliver infrastructure, it has now been proved that Irish Water has not come in on budget on any of the contracts I have seen.

I will give a small synopsis of what has happened since the local authorities stepped away from water services and Irish Water stepped in. Ballingarry lost water for three days because an alarm went off and no one came back to check it. Pumps ran dry. We lost the water supply because someone did not go back to an alarm system that was being looked after by the local authority, and 1,000 houses were without water. We then had to pay for a new pump and run up the services again. The Croom water supply involved the use of five tankers a day for two and half months, which cost hundreds of thousands of euro because when the project started, no one checked where it would connect to. As a result, it went a few hundred thousand euro over budget and there was a need to use tankers to deliver water to a population of 2,500.

Irish Water is not offering value for money, so why not look at a developer-led approach? Let the developers put in the infrastructure and let Irish Water take it over when it has been built on time and on budget. That will help the Minister. All the budgets that come to the Minister are not factual. I want to help the Minister in any way I can by showing Irish Water up and showing that it is not offering value for money in order to allow him deliver more houses. I do not care if he gets the praise for it. Once the houses are built, I do not care who gets the praise. I want to help. I do not want to help with money being squandered when we could deliver infrastructure.

I also want to see the infrastructure for the water supplies we have been talking about. I spoke here two weeks ago. If we take storm water out of the sewerage system, a lot of the plants that are under pressure will survive until the Minister can get funding to them. It is a simple fix to remove water where we can. All new developments can be separated at no extra cost. If we can deliver that now, we can use existing systems and allow more houses to be built by removing the storm water and letting it run into the waterways by means of an inverted system. That is all we have to do. It is a simple fix. It would help the Government deliver more houses until it gets the chance to upgrade the plants.

During the winter months, we treat 70% water and 30% sewerage. When we have a dry summer, we deal 100% with sewerage and the plants are fine. Again, I am trying to help the Government to deliver. I will throw the ball in and the Minister can pull on it. He can deliver the houses. It is a win-win situation for everyone. The Minister will get value for money because I have no problem with being a watchdog and letting him deliver. This is what I am asking the Minister to do: let me help him by showing him he is not getting value for money. This will allow him to deliver more houses through his Department. That is what I am asking, and I will help him. At any meeting he is attending or any place he is going, let me in for a day to listen to what he is being told. Let me take the projects apart and show him they do not offer value for money. Development-led projects are needed so the Minister can deliver more houses. I am here to help. I will criticise him if I have to for not taking me up on my suggestion. If he wants help, I will give him the help he wants. That is what I am offering.

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