Results 6,881-6,900 of 16,478 for speaker:Tommy Broughan

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: There was. I had no-----

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: No, we are not.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: It is a lot of homework.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: The shambles we have witnessed for the last few hours from the Minister, Deputy Kelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, is reminiscent of what happened four or five years ago when two senior Ministers, Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey, did not have a clue that the blanket bank guarantee had bankrupted our country. It is a very similar situation.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: As the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will recall particularly well, the then Ministers knew nothing about a key element of the figures they were supposed to be supervising in government. Regardless of how we consider the conservation grant numbers in this section of the Bill, it seems that the €271 million is evaporating before our eyes like the 40% of water that is being wasted from the...

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: They will be waiting for the Government in the long grass behind the garden wall. People will raise the night we found out the Government did not know what the figures were or what the income was.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: This goes back to a broader question about Irish Water. When the Minister came in here to make his famous "legacy" speech about what would happen, he did not give us the numbers. We had to go back to our offices and go on Twitter to get some figures. We got some basic figures about the whole parameters of Irish Water an hour or two hours later. We still do not know how it is going to...

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: Except for ourselves and Azerbaijan. We had a good reason for them.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: The Minister, Deputy Howlin, will remember that he opposed water charges with me.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: He stood shoulder to shoulder beside me.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: We stood together and we defeated and destroyed Bertie Ahern's whole system of water charges in the mid-1990s. We stopped it. To be fair, Mr. Ahern later went to Europe and said "this is something the Irish do differently because we live in a rain-sodden country where water is freely available".

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: We decided to meet the cost of supplying water from general taxation.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: We are left in a situation in which we do not know the global numbers for this Irish Water quango because the Minister, Deputy Kelly, did not give them to us the day he came in here to make his famous speech.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: We have come back in here tonight to find that everything is a total shambles. I advise the Minister, Deputy Kelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, to adjourn this debate for a couple of days in order that they can go back to their Department to do their homework. When they come back in here, they should try to give us some numbers we can actually discuss.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: These numbers do not add up.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: It is not fair to the House, to the Opposition or to the people. We do not know where we are. It looks like after all this schemozzle and turmoil, it is going to cost us money to collect these taxes.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: Hear, hear.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: I support Deputy Peter Mathews and the other Deputies in the request to adjourn.

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: I think we should adjourn because a very important proposal has been brought to our attention. I think Deputy Donnelly's original questions have not been addressed. We are talking about charges on the Exchequer and charges on the taxpayer. Thanks to modern technology, everybody in the Chamber has checked the CSO website, as has Deputy Brian Stanley who first raised the number of...

Water Services Bill 2014: Committee Stage (Resumed) (11 Dec 2014)

Tommy Broughan: I think the House is completely confused. In over 20 years in the House I cannot remember a time when the ministerial team was not able to present basic figures on Committee Stage that actually added up. I note the sweeper of the team has come to the House to do a bit of sweeping in defence-----