Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Going back to the regulatory impact assessment, will the Department make available its costings and figures concerning the change in the original legislation whereby the supply will not be cut off and the fines are €30 and €60? How many do they expect? I am sure those figures must have been done and somebody in Uisce Éireann must have carried out that assessment. It would be imprudent not to make budgetary provision for bad debtors who will not pay, as well as for those who are unable to pay.

Will the Minister make available to the House on Monday the assessments that were carried out by Uisce Éireann due to the change and the fact that people's water supply will not now be cut off? What effect will this have on the figures? Fundamentally, it will have an enormous effect on the figures. For Uisce Éireann to tell the Minister otherwise would - let me put this as diplomatically as possible - be misleading the Minister to the point at which it will require the Government and therefore the taxpayer or consumer to make up the loss. There must be figures on this somewhere. They must have been done by Uisce Éireann, but has it made them available to the Department? If not, there is a serious accountancy error, because the books will not balance. The figures must have changed and there must be a bigger bad debt provision now as a result of sections 4 and 6.