Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)

I welcome the decision to cut the VAT on apartments from 13.5% to 9%. It is a practical step and one that will help reduce costs and encourage the construction of homes we so desperately need. Let us be clear: cutting VAT alone will not solve this crisis. I hear speaker after speaker condemning the landlord. Lord God almighty, where do they think we are going to get houses from? It does not appear like that. They are putting down landlords who own one house or two houses. I was speaking to a man in west Cork this morning who said if he could get out of it, he would be gone long ago. He said all the pity is for the tenant and there are new regulations coming in regarding six years and all that.

There is nothing for him. They could wreck his apartment and they would not have to pay him. It could take 18 months to get them out. He said there is no protection for the likes of them and that he wishes to get out of there. Why?

There are also other issues in relation to isolation in terms of infrastructure needs. Today we learned that Uisce Éireann missed its leakage targets by a mile. A total of 176 million litres were promised. Only 90 million litres were delivered. Now it faces a €20 million penalty, while €13.6 billion is being sanctioned for water investment over five years. This is reality. We cannot keep pouring billions of euro into utilities without accountability. While families wait for homes, cutting VAT is welcome, but it is not enough. We need joined-up thinking. Housing and infrastructure must go hand in hand. If we fail to connect the dots, we fail the people who are counting on us. I know that.

I meant to bring this issue up last week but unfortunately my question did not get picked. In relation to the people of Adrigole, I was at a public meeting the other day. Fine Gael Senator Noel O'Donovan was there. Fianna Fáil Minister of State, Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan, was there. The three of us knew three weeks in advance that a meeting was coming up. We asked Uisce Éireann to simply give us an honest deadline. There were 14 breakages in the water supply at Adrigole. The crèche and school had to be closed. The businesses had to close down. People who were doing the Airbnb had to hand money back to customers in the morning because they had no water to shower. Filthy water was coming through the taps. There have been 14 breakages since July and we could get nothing but a generic scandalous answer, the same as I got again this morning after I went back in there. We asked for a meeting with the organisation - three or four people - to find out what the plan is and what it intends to do. Fourteen breakages in any community would not be acceptable anywhere else, but it seems to be acceptable because it is Adrigole. It is a rural community in west Cork. They are the same people as anywhere else and they deserve their water. It is scandalous to think that they are facing a winter of breakages and worse and they are getting a generic answer stating it was a very dry summer in some places and a wet summer in other places. That is nonsensical. It is time for Uisce Éireann to put its hands up in the air and say something is wrong.

The Government has to take responsibility. It cannot be handing a €13 billion budget over to Uisce Éireann with no accountability for it. That is what I am angered by. I ask the Tánaiste to intervene on our behalf and at least meet with the local community in Adrigole and give us the right because we are facing that meeting again in Adrigole in a couple of weeks' time. I will give them the same answer that I gave them the last day - that there is no accountability and I cannot do anything for them. It is just a scandalous situation that we find ourselves in as public representatives.

It is the same situation with Shannon Vale, Dunmanway, Rosscarbery, Ballydehob and Goleen. Uisce Éireann's wastewater treatment plants are pouring raw sewage into the water. My God, every farmer in the country is held accountable for any drip that goes out of his farm. Mother of God, Uisce Éireann and the EPA. The EPA turns a blind eye. It spends every day drawing up reports about agriculture and farmers, but it forgets about the very people it is responsible for. It is failing to address these issues in all these communities and to have a proper wastewater treatment structure in order that we can go back and say to the people that something is going to happen and that they can build more houses, not a token response but a real response.

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