John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am flabbergasted listening to members of Fianna Fáil and their hypocrisy. It really is the dig out party. Privately, I believe Fianna Fáil supports water charges. Was it not going to introduce them to a greater extent than this Government has done? That was espoused by Councillor Paschal Fitzmaurice on Newstalk the other day. He said what the Government was introducing was fair, so I think Fianna Fáil is all over the shop and is only playing politics on this issue. It is like a blind mongrel that thinks its smells blood and is going for the jugular.

Fianna Fáil is using words like "debacle". There were problems with the establishment of Irish Water but the Minister, Deputy Kelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, have dealt in a fair way with all of those issues. Senator Keane said she listened to people being interviewed on RTE yesterday, including people from Boyle in my county, and not one of them mentioned meters and charges but all they mentioned was water quality. As I have said in the House previously, if people get good quality water from their taps, they will be quite prepared to pay for it because they are paying through the nose for water in supermarkets.

We hear Fianna Fáil say money is being wasted. If one goes to Roscommon, one will see that money is not being wasted. Never before has there been investment to deal with our water quality as there is now in towns like Castlerea, Boyle, Ardcarn, Killeglan and in many more areas in County Roscommon. It never happened before. One can say one already pays for one's water in our taxes but we have always paid for a broken water system in our taxes. Now we need investment. We saw the EPA report yesterday about the lead piping and the hundreds of millions of euro required to fix that issue alone. We cannot keep going back to the taxpayer. Everybody has to contribute something to solve this problem.

As was said, 35% of the people in this country already pay for water and they have no issue with that. We see Fianna Fáil being critical of the establishment of Irish Water but I did not hear it being critical of the monster it created, namely, the HSE, and about its waste of money on e-voting machines which never saw the light of day.

I have been told meters are being put into unfinished housing estates which have not been taken over by the local authorities. Can I get clarity on that, because it would not be fair? The last thing that the local authorities should be doing is installing meters in unfinished housing estate, seeing as they cannot turn on lights and finish footpaths. It is unfair that they should be putting in water meters.