Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is precisely the point. The big problem is that Senator John Gilroy believes that to be the case when it is not. It is the plain people of Ireland who are speaking. I have engaged with many people in my constituency. In my experience it is not the case that this is a concerted effort by one particular party, but other Members can speak for themselves. I am sorry to be political, but because Members on the other side of the House has been on this issue, I will be, too. They are peddling the myth that Fianna Fáil did not invest in water infrastructure. If ever an urban myth gained legs, it is this one. At the height of the Celtic tiger €4.8 billion was invested in infrastructure. As Senator Darragh O'Brien pointed out and as many of my colleagues across rural Ireland would testify - if Government Senators were truthful, they would do so, too - there is the evidence of this on the ground in the small local and regional water schemes introduced in the past ten years.

To be even more political, not so much in the context of the abolition of domestic water rates for which, like Senator Darragh O'Brien, I do not feel I was responsible and which I thought was terrible, during the period in office of the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition between 1981 and 1987, it actually abolished the rates support grant.

It then gave the authority to local authorities to raise revenue locally, which resulted in a number of local authorities introducing water rates. The rainbow coalition in the 1990s attempted to introduce water rates. On the eve of the election, rather than having measured and considered reflection on a policy issue, it said, in a panic, that it would not introduce water charges. In 2003, the then Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Martin Cullen, introduced a Water Services Act which attempted to address the water infrastructure in the country.

It is a known and statistically accepted fact that we have approximately 99% water quality, which is unusually high for a country which has a low population density, and we are free of E. coli, notwithstanding the boil water notices, particularly in Roscommon. It is a result of the low population density that is unique to Ireland.

Some 25,000 km of piping has to be addressed. No Government, even with all of the money that was available during the Celtic tiger era, would have been able to complete that programme. Fianna Fáil cannot be accused of being lacking in developing the infrastructure of the country, because the legacy is there for everybody to see.

I was the first and only person to raise the question of PPS numbers. It escaped everybody else. Despite the fact that the Bill will amend legislation, there is a very real danger that it is also inherently flawed, and we could be here again to amend the legislation further. As Senator O'Brien pointed out, the storm clouds are already gathering around the amount of money that will be collected and generated as a result of the amending legislation, which may not meet EU subvention requirements. Overall, until such time as the entire water infrastructure is fit for purpose, local authorities should be able to continue to operate its development.

I support the concept of water metering. It has to be in place because of the high rates of leakage, irrespective of what anybody else might think. Otherwise, how will we be able to find out about leaks? I do not think the fair-minded general public would be in opposition to that. Overall, the problem now centres on the credibility factor of Irish Water and whether the Government can be trusted to ensure that there will not be privatisation. That is why we will call for a very specific constitutional amendment to ensure that happens.