David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister paints with a very broad brush in this section. While Senator Cáit Keane referred to various interest groups, she was referring to the explanatory memorandum which is not binding at all. When I say the Minister paints with a very broad brush, I mean he establishes something called the customer consultative forum, which sounds very good, but there is no indication of the mechanism by which customers - people who have been enlisted as customers without voluntarily participating - can have their voices made clear.

The Minister refers in the subsection to a number from 12 to 60. That is a very wide range. Perhaps I have missed something, but I see nothing as to how members will be appointed or selected or what interests they will represent. It is very important to have someone there from the coalface to represent the interests of the forcibly enlisted customers. If one needs a comment on the Government's position throughout the Bill that it needs the establishment of Irish Water to provide money for investment, one learns today that there has been less investment in the past two years than there was in the preceding ten years. It has actually gone down. It is an extraordinary statement. At all times, the Government has been shouting that it needs money for investment yet it is not putting any in at all. It is reducing it. The number of leaks-----