John Crown (Independent)

I wish to address the broad philosophy of how we are addressing the water problem. There is a certain consistency across the public service that the way to solve real world, practical problems is to develop another bureaucracy. I am not saying that we do not need to have officialdom and regulatory oversight. The health service had the lowest number of specialists per head of population in the developed world 19 years ago when I first came back to Ireland. Some 19 years later, we still have the lowest number of specialists per head of population in the western world. We have seen a profusion of new bureaucracies, including HIQA, the HSE and the national cancer control programme. I have always thought that we need to look at the problems and fix them and give new bureaucracies a subsidiary priority.

I do not live in a remote area but within five miles of this House. Drawing a line from the American embassy to the German embassy, one passes through my front garden. I live on the Merrion Road, across the street from St. Vincent's Hospital. I live at sea level, so water from a reservoir does not have to be pumped up to my house. When we had snow that was modest by European and international standards last year, we had a major problem with water provision in this relatively privileged area. Unlike many of my Seanad colleagues, I missed the page in the Constitution that refers to my constituency. I do not have a geographical constituency but a virtual one. However, I live in an area and I refer to it. In that area, we could not maintain water supplies. Many of my friends who emigrated in the 1980s from Irish medicine came back for Christmas and the new year and were stunned that they could not have a shower at any time of the day. I am not trying to make a case for privilege but for a real problem with infrastructure.

During the year, the manager of a Cork council stated that 50% of publicly provided water in Cork is wasted. I am sure the Minister of State is familiar with these figures throughout the country. We have a major infrastructural problem. Even when we do not have freezing weather and pipe ruptures, we have a major problem with water leakage when it comes to normal, week-to-week ambient demands.

I have said to the Minister of State's colleagues that the three things which will determine our future as a species are probably food, water and energy. They will determine whether civilisation as we know it will exist when our children and grandchildren are living in new societies in 50, 80 and 100 years time. It is critically important that the water issue is taken very seriously, not just as an administrative or political problem. The first thing we should realise is that it is a crime.

We know from the Minister of State's speech that we live in a relatively privileged area in terms of water. We live in a relatively privileged area in terms of rain, but in terms of water provision there are not many capital cities in western Europe which, when modestly challenging weather occurred, had to curtail water services to near wartime rationing levels. It is important that we give absolute priority to fixing infrastructure. Any resources which are going into buying, maintaining, monitoring and storing meters should only be used after the actual infrastructure is fixed and water wastage is dealt with. When we have done that we can then encourage people to have responsible water use. Appropriate public education could cause that responsibility in advance. If we have the money for metering, building, etc., we have the money to fix the infrastructure first.