Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for taking this important Commencement matter. It is my first opportunity to congratulate the Minister of State on his new role. We in County Tipperary call him, "the Tipperary Minister", because a region of ours is in his constituency. I know from mutual friends we have in Newport and Birdhill that they are very proud of the Minister of State's elevation and he is regarded as an incredible worker in that area.

I have brought up Irish Water numerous times with regard to the moving away of water services from local authorities to Irish Water. Before I delve into the Clonmel and business issues, it is important to acknowledge the work that has been done in the past number of months in the Minister of State's Department and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, in particular, with the publication of the framework for the future delivery of water services last June. The transformation team of Irish Water has played a key role in building up relationships between staff in local authorities and Irish Water. I think the team has from now until 2026 to put a plan in place for staff moving and what choices and options they have in moving. By all accounts, from staff I have spoken to in water services, that relationship has improved considerably and they are certainly more engaged and positive about the move.

I will touch on the operational side of things today. Councillors John FitzGerald and Michael Murphy in Clonmel and I face a constant challenge with water services in the area in terms of outages. I am conscious it happened yesterday to a large area of the rural side of Clonmel. In fairness to Irish Water, it has plans in place, some of which will be completed this year, to improve the operational facilities of the plants in Clonmel.

One of the issues we have is a real challenge from a business perspective. Three plants are running in Clonmel. A simplistic way of looking at it is that Poulavanogue manages the east side of Clonmel town centre on the Mountain Road; Glenary covers the west side and Monroe covers everything north of the Clonmel bypass. The future development of Irish Water essentially means that it is changing things around, whereby the Glenary plant will cover Mountain Road and the town centre and Monroe will come in towards the town centre. The difficulty I and an awful lot of other people in Clonmel have with this concerns the quality of the water. Poulavanogue is a plant on top of the Comeragh Mountains from which water comes right down into the town. The quality of the water is second to none. It is top class.

I know the measure to be brought in is temporary, but the challenge we face going forward is that the plant which will replace Poulavanogue for a short period, in Monroe, has very poor-quality water. That is fine if one is a domestic user. One can put in filters and improve the hard water. There is no problem there but, from a business perspective, this has a real impact. If a restaurant or a coffee shop, in particular, needs good quality water going into machines, it will cost considerable money to put systems in place to be able to get that top-quality water and it will cost an awful lot of money to maintain them.Business people are afraid. We have a perfectly good plant that produces top-quality water, which comes from the Comeragh Mountains down into the town. There are many towns across the country that would want this type of water to be coming in from a source on a mountain right beside the town. It is free water. In my view, we are not maximising that top-quality water.

Water supply is a massive issue for businesses. I am not sure all of the business operators in Clonmel realise the impact that this could have for the next number of years. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's response.