Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State. I find the motion very interesting and am glad to speak on it. It is good that Fine Gael introduced it but, unfortunately, I cannot support it. The motion starts out by praising the work of the local authorities and condemning the Government, which is a very political statement. What is being said is that the councils did a great job and the Government an appalling one. Clearly, the problem that arose during the severe weather concerned the gritting of roads, or at least that is what people told me. Gritting roads is a matter for the National Roads Authority and for local authorities. The fact is, as previous speakers noted, some local authorities did well and others did not perform so well. I checked out local authority budgets. The winter maintenance programme deals with facilities for gritting roads. In recent years many councils have reduced considerably their amounts of winter maintenance. They did so because prior to this year there had not been any particularly bad weather and they saw an opportunity to reduce this sum in their budgets. This highlights the fact that the situation was a 20-year event. It may not continue to be such but it was this time. The fact remains that many local authorities were not properly prepared for the weather. That budgetary decision was made at local authority level, in many cases by the Fine Gael councillors on those authorities.

I shall move on because one of the main points of the motion deals with water and water services, matters I hold dear to my heart. Water is life and to have clean water is crucial. Despite the recession, the Government has shown that it takes this matter seriously by spending €500 million per annum on the water services investment programme. This represents an increase on the amounts spent in recent years and it is the highest amount we have ever spent on water services. This is despite the fact that we are in difficult economic times. I am of the view that trying to criticise the Government in respect of this matter is problematic.

The motion states that Seanad Éireann "notes with concern that on average 43% of Ireland's treated water supply was lost through unidentified leaks before the recent severe cold weather". The figure quoted is accurate and we are going to be obliged to deal with this matter. In the past seven years, some €140 million or €20 million per annum was spent on leak eradication. However, the Minister, Deputy Gormley, recently announced that €300 million will be spent on the eradication of leaks. This represents a fivefold increase. To say the Government is not acting is simply inaccurate. The Government has acted and it does have a plan.