David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I think they would like it to run away and disappear. I believe they wish it had never bloody happened and they are perfectly right. They guillotined it when it was going through the Dáil. Not one amendment was accepted in Seanad Éireann but now they are doing some of the things that we in this House recommended at the time. The Minister of State will excuse me if I take his delight with a pinch of salt.

Reference has been made to water conservation, the €100 grant and so on. Could the Minister of State tell me what element of this is conservation? I do not see it. It will be given to people who have little puddles in their back gardens and who are part of a water scheme. Why are they getting it? What does that have to do with conservation? It is simply a book-keeping exercise to keep our "friends" in the European Union and the troika happy. Perhaps the Minister of State could explain the conservation element.

I note a reference to self-declaration and an appropriate audit. The hairs at the back of my head go up when I hear the word "audit". I have just been told that not only do we have to account and vouch for every miserable penny that we get, unlike the people in the trade union whose representatives were clever enough to get all the bonuses and stuff that came in with Charlie McCreevy incorporated into their core income, but now we must have a public accountant. My accountant is not a public accountant and therefore I must go and hire one. I had better not get into that because it will get me too annoyed. Anyway, we can imagine what the audit amounts to.

We have done nothing, basically, since the Vartry Reservoir scheme. The Minister of State maintains we are now among the lowest in Europe. I wonder how that can be if we take into account the tax element that we are already paying and add to it what we will pay through Irish Water.

I note the clever little footwork about putting into legislation a provision that if the Government wishes to privatise Irish Water then it must go to the people. That is a move in the right direction but it is not enough. There should be a referendum. Why not hold a full referendum?

Questions remain concerning the Ervia board and the performance-related award mechanism, also known as a bonus. Like Senator Landy, I am not an economist but I know a little about language. I know that a performance-related award mechanism is a bonus. It is actually the classic definition of a bonus. Anyway, I am pleased they are gone for 2013-14 but they should be gone forever.

The additional part of the Minister of State's speech was simply a matter of playing party politics again. I am unsure why the text was not supplied to us but it was an attack on Sinn Féin. That is fair enough but this is not the time for attacks on Sinn Féin or anyone else. Everyone in the country acknowledges that while water is free and comes piling out of the sky, we pay for the treatment and delivery of water.

This is not about water, it is about the straw that breaks the camel's back. A straw may seem a small and insignificant thing but it is the accumulated pressure beforehand that leads to the collapse of the animal's spine. This is what has happened with Irish Water. People have had enough. They have no more money. They simply cannot pay. I find it galling in the extreme that we should have these measures along with the loss of special needs teachers and so on to pay off the gambling debts of the French and German banks. Fully €8 billion will go out of the country this year in interest charges alone. Why does the Government not do something about that? Why does the Government not stand up to our masters in Europe and tell them that we have had enough and that we are not taking any more? We should have eye-balled them in the first place and threatened to pull down the columns of the temple and let them see how they like that.

What about the takeover of personnel from the local authorities? This is exactly what happened with the HEA. It took over a whole wedge of people who were in the old locally-organised thing. There was nothing for them to do and the organisation had no work for them but it took them on board anyway.