David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State will forgive us for not wanting to take a leap of faith with him. I would much rather see what he spoke about now when we are making decision on the establishment of this body.

The qualifications of the new CEO are not the issue. We all fully support what the Minister of State said regarding the new appointee. Many staff members of Waterford city and county council have good qualifications and are excellent public servants. I have only heard of one director of services on Waterford City Council, who is a friend of mine, taking up a position in Uisce Éireann. However, the issue is the breaking of the link between local authorities and the provision of water. The Minister of State cannot, on the one hand, have, as he put it, "those tangible connections" while, on the other, breaking them by taking the provision of water out of local government. I do not see how that stacks up.

There is an opportunity through the new local government structures - I disagree with the regional structures - to examine this. For example, Sinn Féin does not prefer the option of domestic water metering. International best practice demonstrates that district metering is a much better option to measure the quality of water, water usage and so on. The Government did not examine these options because this is about collecting taxes and taking in more money, not water conservation. One of the Minister of State's party colleagues in the House referred to the waste of water. I could not agree more that lots of water is wasted. In some instances, this is the responsibility of householders but the vast majority of waste is caused by the system itself. The Senator mentioned the word "sinful". Surely we have to then agree that if it is sinful that so much water is wasted and if 38% of every litre produced of the quality necessary to go into people's homes is lost in the system and only a small percentage is lost through waste by the householder, why is the Government penalising the householder and asking him or her to pay the cost? We are not fixing the problem but the Minister of State will not concede that. The legislation represents an opportunity to charge citizens more money and raise taxes in a regressive way and in the most indirect way.

He mentioned public services. Once the concept of a charge is introduced, as sure as night follows day, it will be much easier to privatise Uisce Éireann in time. This is one of the reasons the Government is opting for a single authority. That will happen, even through the Minister of State is shaking his head.