Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----they left 1 million people dependent on water that was not drinkable. They left 20,000 people on boil water notices year in, year out. Their inaction were the cause of 49% of water leakages. They left a situation in Dublin city where capacity was down to between 1% and 2%, where in most European countries there is a headroom of at least 15%. They left 44 urban areas throughout the country with untreated sewage.

I recall as a new councillor being part of a deputation that had a meeting with one of the Senator MacSharry's ministerial colleagues at the time, who subsequently became infamous, to try to get sanction for a sewerage treatment plant for my town. I had photographs of five locations on the River Suir where raw sewage was flowing into the river and the Minister of the day had not the manners to take the photographs out of my hand and look at them. The next time the Labour Party was in government in the 1990s that sewerage plant was put in place. That is what we are doing across the country now, as was outlined by Senator Keane with regard to the number of new sewerage treatment plants, remedial works, upgrades, etc., that have been put in place.

When we debated this subject in the House two years ago, the figure thrown out by Fianna Fáil was that the charge for water per household would be €750. Then it depreciated the figure to €400. However, it was wide of the mark in all its figures, as it is with respect to the costs set out in this motion. The cost of setting up Irish Water was €172.8 million, not the figure of €750 million, which Senator MacSharry obviously plucked out of the sky, as he did with most of the other figures in the motion.