Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree very much with everything Senator Barrett stated. I would like an urgent debate on Irish Water, which is still not acceptable. People have a big problem with this huge umbrella organisation. Yesterday, I gave the analogy that it is like establishing McAlpine to build a tree house. This day two years ago local authorities provided water, albeit in a flawed state in certain areas, for a particular cost. Now, two years later, nothing has improved except it will cost of hundreds of millions more. The model is fundamentally wrong and I have a major problem paying for water to support a grand superstructure umbrella organisation of well-heeled individuals used to the luxury of spending other people's money. It is wrong and needs to be dealt with. People will not accept it. I realise the Minister has tried very hard in recent weeks to come up with a plan which people will accept, but sadly I am afraid he has failed. It is required that this organisation be abandoned and the Government, through central capital expenditure, build an infrastructure worthy of a 21st century nation and provide water to all parts of it. This is the responsibility of the Government, not to finance through bribery of the people with their own money this superstructure of an organisation.

The Government seeks to turn the landlords into agents of the Revenue Commissioners and the Collector General, which is fundamentally wrong and doomed to failure. As somebody who must declare an interest, as an auctioneer who knows about collecting deposits and rents from tenants, not a landlord in the country has not experienced a tenant who is moving out stating he or she will not pay the last month's rent as the deposit will go against it. The Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB, is an unmitigated disaster. While it does good work at times in representing and protecting tenants, I give the example of a tenant who refused to pay rent but continued to live in a property for three and a half years, who was eventually evicted having paid no rent and owing approximately €27,000, and who wrecked the house and walked into a local authority house the next day. The Government is expecting a great amount from landlords to do this work, and putting the onus on them to collect this is doomed to failure. I confidently predict there will be no collection of water rates through landlords because it is impossible and unenforceable. I appeal to the Government to go back to the drawing board. It has been an unmitigated disaster and a mistake but it should move on, get rid of the big super quango, return to the local authority model for now, and invest in capital infrastructure to get the standards in Roscommon and other counties without good water up to the quality to which people are entitled.