Terry Brennan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Nash, to the House. Our water services are in a terrible state and they must be fixed. This can only be done by a single national body and the old way of doing it, through 31 local authorities, has not worked. Everybody recognises this. We need more than €13 billion to fix Ireland's water services and the first €5.5 billion is in the Irish Water business plan. It will fix the worst problems by 2021. We must remember that Irish Water has already fixed more in two years than had been fixed in the previous ten years. For example, 20,000 households have been taken off boil water notices, many of them affecting families that had to boil water before drinking it for years.

The Irish Water model of a public water utility is the norm for water services throughout the world. It is the proven model to deliver these services. Metering works, as 40% of Irish Water customers with meters are paying less than the cap bill, as has been mentioned by some of my colleagues. I have surveyed 100 houses that were metered and 92 or 93 of the occupants were amazed at what they were being charged through the meter for water. We should review the cap. Almost 50% of treated drinking water is lost through leaks and we pump out raw sewage at 45 locations throughout the country into our oceans and rivers. That is unacceptable in 2016.

There are 5,000 customers who still have to boil water before they can drink it. Water supplied to 700,000 customers is at risk of contamination. We do not have enough clean water and wastewater treatment to support future economic growth and the future of our country depends on our economic growth. We need treated water. This was the position before Irish Water came along and it is there to fix this problem. It has achieved much in the past two years and it will achieve more. We need a single national body to fix this problem. After many parts of our country were flooded recently, there were calls for a single national body to deal with those issues, including waterways and flood planning. Some of those calls came from people who have said they do not want this type of utility for Irish water. A single national body is the only way in which to have a full picture of all the issues nationally, plan for the long term and prioritise the most urgent problems, delivering the required actions in an integrated way.

Fixing our water and wastewater infrastructure is a massive national project that can only be sorted out by a dedicated national expert body. We have set up Irish Water as that national organisation and we now have a single utility with the systems and expertise to take on the challenge of fixing our water services. It now has responsibility and is accountable for getting the job done. We need more than €13 billion to fix Ireland's water services properly and the first €5.5 billion is in the Irish Water business plan. That will fix the worst problems by 2021. Irish Water will invest that €5.5 billion to bring water services to an acceptable standard, eliminating all boil water notices and reducing leakages to 38%, saving 180 million litres of water that is lost every day of the week. All pumping of raw sewage into our rivers and seas will be stopped and costs will be cut by €1.1 billion. Irish Water has already reduced costs by 14%, which should also be recognised.