Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

People living in a one-bedroom apartment in Dublin are paying more than the owner of a five-bedroom house in Tipperary. It is a nonsense to say that is fair. I ask Members opposite not to go on with that type of stuff.

I recognise that the Minister has rowed back and tried to rectify some of the terrible decisions of his predecessor. Of course, those decisions were made with the agreement of Labour Party Ministers. Where is Cabinet collective responsibility in all of this? Members opposite traipsed in here this time last year and voted against every amendment we tabled. When we on this side of the House - not just my Fianna Fáil colleagues and me, but other Opposition Members - pointed out that the Government was going against independent advice in the manner in which Irish Water was being established, our warnings were ignored. The Government likewise ignored the advice from PricewaterhouseCoopers and went ahead with its plan. The Minister is now trying to fix that mess.

Unfortunately, the Bill he has brought forward is a bad Bill that will copperfasten a bad plan by a bad Government. It will deliver nothing. The Government will probably raise some €20 million from these measures. In fact, I expect it will not even get the plan through the European Commission given the level of subvention being put in place in an effort to get people to buy a pig in a poke. It is not about water conservation any more. I say this as a person who supports a metering programme. It is important to have meters so that we can identify the location of leaks and facilitate people to have control over their water usage. We have heard a lot of rubbish to the effect that there was no investment in water infrastructure under previous Governments.

In my area I can give 20 examples of new sewage treatment plants and water network upgrades. While it might not be enough, there has been investment in water services. Will the Minister follow through on a commitment given to me two years ago by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, that he would carry out a full review on the greater Dublin drainage programme? I heard the Minister recently say on the news that he needs to deliver a massive sewage treatment plant in Dublin when he does not. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has already spent €30 million on desktop audits for the greater Dublin drainage programme. It will apply to the Minister shortly for a foreshore licence to destroy the east coast with a sewage treatment plant that will be four times the size of Croke Park. Up to €1 billion has been scheduled to be spent on this project. Will the Minister re-examine it and follow through on the commitment by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform that he would review it on a cost-benefit analysis basis?

I nearly got emotional listening to Senator John Whelan earlier. He was so charged about this, saying it was awful, that we need to work together and asking who could play politics with this issue.