John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

That is welcome and that is the way it should be. Many people made significant efforts and incurred a good deal of personal expense in areas where they did not have much money to ensure that such infrastructure was put in place. The National Federation of Group Water Schemes deserves a great deal of praise for that.

Section 95 refers to acquiring a waste waterworks and the need for two thirds of the people who own that waterworks to agree to it being taken in charge. One of the difficulties about that, and I know about this in practice, is that frequently in the case of the older systems the original trustees may no longer be there. There is a similar difficulty in the case of parish halls where people are trying to take them over to renovate them.

A man in Kilcullen, Paddy Nugent, was one of the first people to buy land on behalf of the local community to erect affordable houses that could be bought. He did that on his own initiative by running a non-stop draw throughout the county for numerous years. The money collected went towards that scheme. That is a model for what could be done. One of the by-products of that scheme is a wastewater treatment system, which needs to be taken in charge by the county council. That is a straightforward case, but there can be cases where the trustees of the scheme are departed and this can create a difficulty.