John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with most people who say the setting up of Irish Water was an absolute disaster but it seems to have been set up by somebody who was leaving the country in a hurry and it was basically thrown together. It is not fair that the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, should be blamed for the disaster that was left on his desk. Senator MacSharry said it was like setting up McAlpine to build one house but that is not the case. I do not know if he realises the scale of the problem we have in this country. We need to raise €8 billion to fix the piping network because 40% of our water is lost through leakage.

It is the Government which his party led that is really at fault here in that when we were awash with money, which it would admit, it spent nothing on fixing the water network. What was Senator MacSharry protesting about in Sligo?