Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Could the Acting Leader make arrangements for the appropriate Minister who I presume is the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to come to the House and answer some questions about Irish Water in particular? On this occasion, I am not talking specifically about the charges although they are areas we all want to discuss as usual. We might ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to come to the House so that we could discuss with him the schedule of capital projects that would have been planned by the various local authorities in the context of their water and wastewater treatment and the fact that given that responsibility for all of these plans comes under the remit of Irish Water, there is very real concern and a good bit of anecdotal evidence to suggest that projects that were expected to begin in the short term are now very much on the long finger because of the very significant cost base that Irish Water runs on.

In Sligo what is referred colloquially as the bundle scheme relates to villages I am sure people are aware of - Grange in north county Sligo, Strandhill, which is west of Sligo town and Tubbercurry, which is south of Sligo town and is the country's second largest town. These villages have all been waiting for some considerable period for a new sewerage treatment plan. The previous Government made available a 90% subvention for those programmes to go ahead. They have yet to go ahead. Sligo County Council needs them to go ahead. We are in a position to move on them but it is now the case that Irish Water is long fingering them. The populations of these villages throughout the country face the difficulty of having to pay for water in the first instance. We saw how in the context of the Roscommon-Leitrim by-election, the Government has postponed costs, and rightly so, for the people of Roscommon because they have dirty water. We have substandard sewerage treatment facilities in Grange in north county Sligo, Strandhill west of Sligo town and Tubbercurry in south County Sligo. Now that they are paying for everything, people are entitled to know when these works will be carried out. They were ready to go pre-Irish Water. Now that we have Irish Water, the matter seems to be pushed very far down the list and I would like some clarification on that. I know that a specific case might be more appropriate to Adjournment Matters but I know that there are examples of this in every local authority area and the Minister ought to give us an indication as to who is in charge, what the timetable for events that were planned is and when people can expect work and improvements on the ground.