Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach arís. Bíonn sé an-fhlaithiúlach. He is very generous with his time in the Seanad. He is always willing to come in and take our questions. This Commencement matter is on the need for the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to make a statement on the progress of the taking over of national water services by Irish Water in line with the key performance indicators used by the water advisory body in reporting on the performance of Irish Water, with particular regard to infrastructure delivery.

This is not the first time I have raised the issue of water in this House. I will keep going with it because I firmly believe it is a basic human right. We have very significant issues in that regard. I acknowledge that there has been some good progress. Irish Water has halved the number of places from which raw sewage runs into our waterways. That is good. It is a disgrace that we ever had twice the current number but it is good that some work is being done and that we are getting raw sewage treatment plants in a few places in my own county including Kilrush, Kilkee, Liscannor and Clarecastle. There is also one on its way to Ballyvaughan.

We hear a lot about the town centres first approach, rejuvenating rural areas, rural development and regional balance but these objectives cannot be achieved without proper water infrastructure. There are villages and towns that are really suffering as a result of the lack of such infrastructure. The issue is hindering the building of new houses. There is a shovel-ready project in Broadford. The funds are there to build that housing estate but there is no water infrastructure. We talk about housing but I always bring it back to the basic fact that if there is no water infrastructure, there cannot be housing. It is a very significant issue.

I am raising this issue in respect of Irish Water today for a few different reasons. There is concern about the people in local authorities who work in the area of water and who will be reassigned to Irish Water. They have many fears about that. There have been fears about Irish Water from the get-go, when it was set up. It is time that we, as a House, ask for a referendum on water. The Green Party fought for this to be included in the programme for Government. We have been asking for it for years. Until we are sure that Irish Water will remain in public ownership and will not become a private entity, there will always be a lack of trust in it among the people of our country. We are here to give people hope and faith and to represent them. There is this vagueness around Irish Water and the ownership of water. It is not mentioned in our Constitution. I have written the wording for a referendum if anybody wants to take it from me. We need to affirm public ownership of water in our Constitution. That will alleviate the fears of those whose jobs are to be taken over by Irish Water and of people on the ground. It is a very simple matter.

I have another minute. That is not too bad. There is another matter I wanted to raise. I know that nothing is as simple as you think. People ask why we do not just do X, Y or Z but matters are complicated, as I have learnt over the last year and a half. Even though we know things should be done, it takes longer to do them than we think it should. I will give the Minister of State an example. I spent two and a half years trying to get a water bottle refilling station in one of our lovely local towns, Ennistymon. It is insane that it takes two and a half years to get something as simple as a place to fill a water bottle. I was a councillor so I was able to source some funding but community groups often seek these water bottle refilling stations and the first wall they face is that, when they go to the local authority, they are told that Irish Water charges €2,500 to make the little connection from the pipe below the ground to the device above the ground. I purposely picked a site in the square in Ennistymon that was right beside a water hydrant so that there would be no cost involved because I had heard these crazy rumours that Irish Water was charging domestic households €1,000 per metre of pipe. I tried to remove all the obstacles from the beginning because the first answer you get is often "No."

One arm of the State, Irish Water, charges the local authority €2,500 for a water connection for the public good and for the community, which pays its taxes, and both of these arms of the State actually come under the same Department. We have a water crisis and a plastics crisis. This is a no-brainer. It should not take a two-and-a-half-year campaign. These stations should be popping up in every single town and village in Ireland. We are using more than 1 million plastic bottles a day. I know we have a plan to move away from plastic bottles but we should do that now.

I call on the Minister of State to outline whether the key performance indicators for Irish Water have been looked at and how Irish Water is doing in that regard. We need to give people assurance about water. We definitely need a referendum on water and we need to remove that stumbling block whereby one arm of the State, Irish Water, charges another €2,500 for a connection for a water refill station.