John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

I noted in the explanatory and financial memoranda and during the Minister's speech that the Bill is concerned with the actual provision of water services and does not seek to directly take on board wider environmental issues surrounding water resources. It refers to matters such as pollution control, water quality, in the broadest sense, and river basin management. However, we cannot discuss this issue in the absence of an environmental debate, which Senator O'Toole demonstrated. The Bill refers to abstraction and the Minister having to take full account of river basin management. It is both implicitly and explicitly in the Bill.

I am gravely concerned about the capacity of the natural resource to meet the need. Everyone assumes that when a new housing estate is built in Dublin, people should be able to turn on the tap for fresh, clean water. However, somebody somewhere pays for this. Traditionally, one of the major sources of supply for Dublin was the Ballymore Eustace plant in County Kildare. However, that has a direct effect on the flow of the River Liffey and its flora and fauna. There is a reference in the Bill to sustainability with which I agree. However, it has got to the point where the level of abstraction from the Ballymore Eustace source is becoming unsustainable. People may think this is scaremongering, but one only has to look at examples in the United Kingdom where rivers ran dry. We have an impoundment at the head waters of the River Liffey, which means that compensatory water can be released into the river at times of drought and so on. From my experience of having grown up on the banks of the River Liffey, there is certainly less water in the river now than there was 50 years ago, the reason being that permission was granted for 50 million gallons to be abstracted per day, which I believe has increased to 72 million gallons. A proposal was put forward some time ago to increase the quantity to 124 million gallons. There is only half the flow in the river compared to the level in the past. That does not take into account compensation water, but nevertheless there is a serious environmental dimension to meeting Dublin's increasing water supply needs.

I accept what the Minister has done and I read the report on the origins of the spending in regard to quantity of water that is being lost through the system. I think it was Generale des Eaux who completed a report on the greater Dublin water management system.