Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendment the Minister is bringing to the House today gives me belief and understanding that it will remain with the people in the future. It is a valuable resource and it is a necessity; we cannot live without water. We do not really respect our water and we have to do so. There would be no world without water. We need to protect our water, we need clean water and we need to manage it an awful lot better than we have in the past. We have to put serious investment - in the right way - into protecting our water, the people's water. We need to run it in a businesslike fashion.

The Minister inherited a mess and many hours of it have been debated here in the House. There have been hours of it on television, miles of it in the newspapers according to some documents I believe were shown today, and it was Senator Cullinane who said today could be a historic day in the Seanad if we turn this down. Today is a historic day in the Seanad as far as I am concerned because this is perhaps the first time in the history of the State that our water has received so much debate.

We have to think of the purification, delivery and disposal of our water. From the little bit of reading I have been doing, no Government in the past 80 years has done anything with the water system and that is what we are debating here today, not the stigma over Irish Water or the image it might have.