David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment. I will also speak on the amendments tabled by Sinn Féin. The previous Senator spoke about the madness of this section. It is entitled "Water conservation grant - database" and is a couple of pages long. It is tagged onto the end of a Bill. I asked the Clerk of the Seanad for a copy of the explanatory note on the Bill and found it to be the original explanatory memorandum, which refers to all of the issues we dealt with previously regarding waste. It does not deal with water at all. Some bright spark in the Department obviously thought this was an opportunity to get all of these provisions into a Bill and have it done and dusted before the summer recess, rather than bring forward a separate Bill that would create problems for the Government. That is the reason for doing this, as we discussed on Second and Committee Stages.

However, there is something fundamentally wrong with this water conservation grant. Senator Craughwell alluded to the obvious point that one has to register but one does not have to pay the water charges to get the grant. One need not provide any receipts or any evidence that one has spent a penny on water conservation, yet one is entitled to receive this grant. The reason the water conservation grant was introduced initially is that it was part of the humiliating climb-down by the Government, which had to abandon its previous attempt to get its water services charges through because people were not going to pay the €300 to €400 that was originally provided for by the Government. It had to climb down and introduce amending legislation. However, that was not enough and did not work, so the Government had to return with a third amendment Bill that still did not work. Now we discover that 57% of citizens have not paid their charges and have said repeatedly in opinion polls that they will not do so.

The water conservation grant was to act as some type of inducement to people to pay - if they paid their water charges, they would get the grant. In fact, they do not have to pay but they will still be paid the grant. One of the problems this will cause, and I will discuss the database issue in a moment, is that we are running the real risk of Irish Water not making any money and potentially running at a loss. That will create real problems for the Government. What the Government tried to do in setting it up by sleight of hand and off the balance sheet was an effort to get around fiscal compact and state borrowing rules. Doing it that way has backfired so the Government had to introduce the water conservation grant. It will not work. It is already a laughing stock. I have heard many commentators talking about it. They are perplexed that the Government can introduce such a thing and give money to people for doing absolutely nothing. It is just bonkers. On one hand it is taking money from some people - not everybody but those who will pay - and giving them back the conservation grant, and on the other it is giving it anyway to those who do not pay. It is worth bearing in mind that water charges were introduced under the guise of the need to invest in water services. That rationale has been lost along the way. The centrepiece of the Government's entire water strategy was that it would raise the funds needed to get the system right. Instead, all the Government has done for the past three years is deal with crisis after crisis, and it still is not out of the woods. Fianna Fáil, in a welcome move, has joined Sinn Féin and other Opposition parties in committing itself to the abolition of water charges. It is possible, therefore, that these provisions will never see the light of day. Whichever parties make up the next Government, it seems likely water charges will be gone.

I share the concerns expressed by the previous speaker regarding the database. We need only look to the Eircode fiasco to see what can go wrong with such mechanisms. We are being told, for example, that parts of south Kilkenny, in the constituency of the Minister of State, Deputy Ann Phelan, are now in Waterford. The Minister of State, Deputy Paudie Coffey, has established a boundary commission, but no one would have thought it would extend as far as Mullinavat. It is madness what is going on there. I recently received a notification addressed to "Deputy David Cullinane, TD". It seems these people can predict the future, even if they cannot do much else right.

This Government's track record when it comes to databases containing citizens' information is an absolute shambles. I will not support proposals that give the Government power to set up another such database. The information being sought includes details of the water supply to the dwelling, the treatment of the wastewater discharge from the dwelling, the address of the dwelling, the postcode - that will be interesting - the name of the occupier, whether the dwelling is the principal private residence of the occupier, which forces landlords to give information about tenants, a unique reference number assigned in respect of the dwelling to the occupier of the dwelling, and much more besides. I cannot support any of that. I said from day one, when the former Minister, who is now in Brussels with his big salary, came into this House with his proposals to establish Irish Water that they would not work and he would be back with his tail between his legs. Sure enough, the whole thing has been an absolute disaster for the Government. When we told the former Minister it would not work, we were laughed at by Government party Senators. The Government insisted its proposals would be enacted and everything would work out fine. That has not and will not happen.

It is time to stop the madness. Is the Government going to come back with another amendment Bill introducing further changes when people continue to refuse to pay the charges? What is being done here represents sleight of hand on the part of the Government. We do not support the provisions, and the manner in which they were brought forward is not the right way to draft legislation to deal with these very serious issues. For those reasons, we will press our amendments.