John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

The day that Senator O'Toole goes home happy must be an historic one for Seanad Éireann.

I welcome the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, to the House and I commend him for introducing this important and necessary Bill. It is obviously an area that has needed attention for some time. I am glad that water services will be brought under the one Bill. I also welcome the introduction of the Bill in the Seanad. One of the more successful debates on legislation in this House was when the Environmental Protection Agency Bill was introduced here. There is the potential to have a similar debate and positive input on this Bill.

I note some of the Acts which this Bill will amend go back to 1847. I am sure the citizens of Bray will be relieved to know that sections of one of the Acts relating to Bray will be repealed. Apart from the good candlelit dinners that preceded parliamentary debates in Westminster, there was much activity and the Victorians were good at providing infrastructure. We have reason to be grateful for them in Newbridge which has its waste water and sewage system from that period as a result of the military presence in the town, and it still works. If we could come back in 100 years and see the facilities we installed were still working, we would have something of which to be proud. That is not to say that I do not want the Minister to improve the existing Newbridge system. During heavy rain, the matters of the two systems tend to intermingle and there are consequent problems for the River Liffey.

I am pleased that there is a consultation process being put in place and it should be commended. We have made enormous progress in recent years. I thank the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government for providing funding in County Kildare for the Rathangan water system. There are also proposals to abstract water from the River Barrow for water supply in south County Kildare which has been a problem area for some time. There has been much progress, not just in the water supply, but in waste water management. With the exponential growth in County Kildare's population, the Robertstown sewerage treatment system has required expansion. As an angler on the River Liffey, I have a vested interest in this, but the pollution emanating from there was a source of serious worry. The work that has been done in increasing the capacity of the system has markedly improved matters. Hopefully, we will not be finding asexual fish affected by the hormones emanating from the sewerage system. The hormones do wonders for the fishes' growth but not much else.

There tended to be a territorial way of dealing with water quality in that local authorities did what they had to do for their own areas with no proper management or liaison between them. One cannot ensure water quality on that basis. Water will not flow uphill which is why it must be done on a more regional basis. A good example of this was at Castledermot, County Kildare where there were problems with nitrate pollution of well water with the supply coming from the County Carlow local authority. This sort of synergy has to be brought into play for the effective distribution of water. I commend this aspect of the Bill.

Privatisation has been raised by the Minister and several Senators. Though I am an advocate of privatisation, I am not in the case of water provision, and neither are members of the Progressive Democrats Party. It is one of the most essential pieces of national infrastructure. It is essential that it remains in public ownership and is managed for the public good. I do not see how that can be done other than through public ownership. Recent experience from the United Kingdom underlines this. When commercial greed took over in the UK water companies, some of the standards required of an urban water supply became problematic.