Results 4,401-4,420 of 10,573 for speaker:Patrick O'Donovan
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: However, I am surprised that a rural Deputy would come out in the way he has-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: -----and attack a payment which is being given for the first time to anybody who provides his or her own water. I listened to last night's debate and this anti-rural agenda that is being driven by a very narrow sect-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: What is remarkable is that the bulk of the rural Fianna Fáil Deputies have nothing to say on this because they are in favour of it as a lot of Fianna Fáil Deputies-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Yes, he is on the record, in fairness to him.
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: A lot of Fianna Fáil Deputies, like myself, are engaging with group water schemes on a weekly basis, dealing with problems such as leakages, broken pumps, broken UV lamps and chlorine and fluorine that needs to be bought. Deputy Coppinger might laugh at it but she has not got one scintilla of a clue-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: -----of what it is to live in a rural community and provide one's own services because in Deputy Coppinger's Utopia everything just arrives at one's doorstep and there is no need to pay for it. However, in my part of the country that is not the way things work. In my part of the country, people go out and form a group water scheme, they bore their own well and they provide their own water....
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Deputy Coppinger can attack farmers all she likes but it does not behove the Opposition. I hope the Fianna Fáil Party in particular will disassociate itself from the scurrilous attacks being made on the farming community because it does not do anyone any good and it certainly does not do their case any good. Like everybody else, farmers are paying commercial water rates all their...
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: -----have had way too many burdens-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: -----placed on them by people like Deputy Coppinger who do not have a clue of what it is to operate in the commercial reality. The philosophy being pursued in the amendments and the contributions are the very same philosophies that have people queueing outside bank machines in Greece trying to take out €60.
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: That is the reality and that is what we have descended to in this House. We are taking a very basic commodity, the most basic commodity one needs to sustain any sort of an existence. We want to make it safe and we want to ensure that the supply is intact, that the pipes do not leak, that the pumps work and, most important, that we can tell people who come into the country that they can hold...
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: -----so for people to say that they have a difficulty in transferring the liability and the funding stream across-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Where did they expect that money to come from or do they expect to see water charges rise through the roof?
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Perhaps this is what they want. Finally-----
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Deputy Stanley is the only Member in the House at the moment at whom I am really surprised. He was a member of Laois County Council and knows what it is like for people to have wells that are contaminated. As I do every week, I am sure he fills out forms for people looking for water softeners, for iron to be withdrawn from wells, for UV lamps to be bought and for pumps to be replaced. He...
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: This is on the amendment.
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: It is the water conservation grant that the Deputies opposite are vociferously opposing.
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: It is a water conservation grant. The Deputy should let me finish the point I am making.
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Deputy Stanley will know from his membership of Laois County Council the difficulties for people in rural areas in terms of conserving their water. Every time a pipe is broken between the water meter at the end of the laneway and the bulk tank in the farmyard, that meter is still spinning around. Deputy Coppinger wants to shove up the price of water for commercial users - the farmers and...
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: Enough is enough as far as I am concerned on this issue. This is long overdue, probably 50 years overdue. Many people became secretaries of group water schemes and went to knock on their neighbours' doors to ask for small contributions to dig the road, to get the road opening licence and to lay the pipework with voluntary labour because the local authorities could not afford it because they...
- Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2014: Report Stage (Resumed) (2 Jul 2015)
Patrick O'Donovan: This is the first time in the history of the State that they have got anything. I welcome the Government's decision to give people something back. I welcome that the water conservation grant will do a small amount in terms of enhancing those people's positions in the delivery of water services on which they have been failed by local authorities under successive governments. This is not...