Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree with the Senator. Metering is important and contracts have also been signed. The contract will be finished by August or September and the second phase is being reviewed. A decision might be made to wait and it might be best practice to do that. However, I believe that this phase should finish what was started over the next couple of months. However, we will, hopefully, have a decision once and for all in eight to nine months' time.

Senator Ó Clochartaigh raised the issue of questions not being answered. That is disgraceful. I will try to get it addressed. If they are silly questions, then it is just tough luck but if they are objective questions, which should be answered, then they should be.

Reference was made to Galway County Council waiting one year for an answer. If that is true, then it is disgraceful. I would not stand over it and I will have it addressed. I have seen before where the council needs to dig up the road and it is left waiting for two years for an answer from Eircom or another utility about when it is putting pipes in. It is not a good way to do business. We are aiming for joined up thinking with all Departments and I will certainly check that matter out as that situation is not good enough. We have spoken about this previously and I will not dwell on it today. It was an oversight at the time and it needs to be addressed because people cannot be left wondering. If a person is 95 years of age, he or she cannot be expected to live at home with a serious blockage that is not in his or her boundary. I accept that we have to try to find a way to address that. I cannot say we will have an answer tomorrow but we are working in the Department with Irish Water. Some county councils, such as Westmeath County Council, have taken the lead on these kinds of issues.

I totally agree that people in rural areas are already paying for water. Apart from water schemes, they are paying for wells which require massive costs for installation in the first place. It can cost thousands of euro. It also costs money to run and maintain a well each year. Sceptic tanks and bio-cycle units cost thousands of euro to install, sometimes €4,000 or €5,000. These also require servicing each year and have to be discharged, which costs a couple of hundred of euro on top of electricity running charges. Those people, along with more than 300,000 people on schemes, are also paying tax like everybody else, so it is not exactly very fair. This is another reason for bringing in the single water utility and water charges. These are all matters for analysis and decision on what is right, fair and best for the State.I have no doubt that this will be done in the months ahead. I will now deal with some other issues. We have dealt with blockages.

I will now address the subvention. With all the different changes and the things that have been done for this year in respect of the conservation grant and switching money from subvention to working capital, the net cost of this decision for the months ahead will be in the region of €20 million to €30 million. It will get more expensive in the years ahead and the opportunity to spend money elsewhere, whether on education or services for people of all ages will be an issue. That cost has to be taken into account as well.

Let me give the official position on fines. The Commission can instigate infringement proceedings leading to a referral to the European Court of Justice, where it is considered that a member state is not complying with an EU directive. This can lead to the imposition of fines until such time as compliance is demonstrated. The Commission has refused to comment on hypothetical questions and will only assess compliance based on the specifics of any change to the current system.

As Members know, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, met the Commissioner recently to outline developments regarding the deliberative process on the future funding of domestic water charges and to discuss broader implementation of this as well. Deputy Coveney has explained to the Commissioner what we are trying to do. We understand the implications of this because of previous Government decisions back in 2010. The Attorney General has advised that we believe it is okay to temporarily suspend the charges to have this discussion.

There is an issue and there is legal advice that we used during the negotiations on the programme for Government and in the agreement with other parties. Let me put it out there that we are a minority Government and we need the consensus of the Houses of the Oireachtas to do this. This is regarded as the best approach to give us some time and space to have this conversation in a calm and fair way for everybody and we will see where we go from that. We hope the Commission will understand where we are during these nine months. It might get more complicated thereafter, but that is where it is at. We do not have a cost of what the fines will be for this month or next month.

In respect of metering, there are 840,000 meters installed and another 30,000 to 40,000 will be installed in the months ahead. I believe we should continue with that programme for other reasons, apart from the funding issue. I know that people do not like that this is continuing. I accept that view, but a lot of the concern is about the trust in the system. At the start of the work, the people I met who marched were genuinely afraid that the metering of water usage would take off and would cost them €1,000 year. That happened during the electrification programme, and people did not take up the offer to bring electricity into their homes because they were afraid they would be faced with bills they could not afford from the meter in the corner.