John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

We all welcome the opportunity to express our sincere thanks to the local authority workers for the effort they put in during the recent crisis. My own local authority responded as best it could to every situation and very few people were left without water for a long time. That shows the commitment of the local authority staff involved.

The Opposition has tabled a motion calling for the establishment of a quango, even though it is totally opposed to quangos and to new authorities. This is ridiculous. We have heard every Member on the Opposition benches praise their local authority during this debate. Whether it is justifiable or not, they have had to do it for political reasons. Setting up another quango will not be responsive to the needs of local people. The local maintenance man from the council will have the local knowledge and he will be directed by supervisors who will also have local knowledge. This makes it much easier for them to respond to a situation than someone operating from a central base. A prime example of what operating from a central base can do was the actions of the NRA in making salt available to local authorities this year. Until this year, local authorities were responsible for their own gritting and salt. They catered much better last year under their own control than this year under the control of the NRA. It is not much good when a public relations man from the NRA comes on the evening news and informs the public that they will have salt on Sunday or Monday when people were not able to go about their business because the NRA had not provided adequate salt to deal with the situation.

We all know that certain failures in planning have come to light as a result of the recent freeze. Some of the recently installed water pipes froze because they were not deep enough. Whoever installed them should be asked to account to the Minister for setting a depth level that was not sufficient to deal with the adverse weather conditions. That was not the first time. Some of us are old enough to remember when we had frost for five or six weeks in the early 1960s. The only difference then was that we did not have the water infrastructure we have now. Otherwise the lessons would have been learned that pipes should be put in at a minimum depth.

When we talk about water conservation, we should look at the 35% of treated water that ends up unused in streams and elsewhere. There is a responsibility on local authorities to continue to monitor the amount of water being used in different pipelines. It is not as if they do not have the equipment available to them. We all know that every pipe is metered every so often and that many connections have been metered in recent schemes. This situation needs to be tackled. Many people are forced to use treated water for purposes other than household use. Farmers are sometimes forced to use it because they have no source of supply other than treated water. Are we going to penalise those individuals down the road with a new water authority that will look to charge for every cubic metre that flows into a person's yard? That will have to be examined. If local authorities do not have the discretion to deal with that situation, then regulations and rules will be imposed on people who cannot afford them. We will then have bigger problems.

If we are going to have this situation where people have to use treated water for non-domestic purposes, let us see if an alternative can be put in place to help them, such as by means of providing funding for properly bored wells, water for animals or rain harvesting. Rain harvesting is likely to make a return. We all remember the days when every house had some way of harvesting some of the water that came off the roof, whether it was a barrel or something else. In many cases it was recycled and used for purposes other than household use. This made a contribution.

This motion is nothing more than an opportunist action taken by the Opposition which believes it can blame someone for what has taken place. The fact is we suffered because of the weather conditions and because there was bad planning when it came to water connections and the depth at which mains were installed. It exposed the poor maintenance of water mains of some local authorities. It also exposed the fact that some people have absolutely no concept of the cost of producing water. We know there are people who are delinquent with regard to how they use water and who leave taps running and so forth. The amount of water a half-inch tap can deliver in 24 hours is phenomenal. We are all aware that people left taps running. Perhaps they believed they were justified in the end when they had water and their neighbour did not, until the supply became depleted and then everything froze.

We should not consider establishing a new national authority but we should establish an authority that will have the responsibility from local authority level to deal with this situation. We could put all the money we wish into it and create another quango but we would end up with the same problems we had when we took away other services from the local authorities and areas. Let us recall what took place with the HSE when we did away with the health boards and when local accountability disappeared. I have no wish to see the same situation arise when this report is introduced. That said, it is important we examine how we can minimise the loss of water and the sometimes considerable inconvenience suffered by some.

I have heard it suggested that we might examine the Northern Ireland model. That proved to us once and for all that one agency covering the whole area does not work. They were not able to get it back, they had all sorts of problems and they were dependent on water supplies from other areas. We must consider two things. We must get our infrastructure up to standard and diminish the loss of treated water. A target should be set for 10% inside the next five years rather than setting targets for other emissions which cause less problems to the public. On top of this, the issue need not be handled by a national authority. It should be left at local level and administered by the Department.