Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)

This is a really welcome opportunity to discuss Irish Water and water services in general. I commend the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy James Browne, on the work they have started and the announcement they made this day last week. I am from a very rural constituency where the largest town has 11, 000 people and it is otherwise all villages. The announcement last week of the wastewater treatment plan is really welcome. I agree with my colleague Senator P.J. Murphy that what we really need is consistent design and a consistent acceptance of that design and of the plan by all the local authorities. None of them should be able to get off the hook by saying something is not up to specification. To be fair to Irish Water, when it does something, it does it very well. It should be part of the design process and there must be circulars to local authorities advising them that they must take particular designs on board. The builder who signs up to build 20 or 30 houses needs to know the design standards that must be met.

In a village further down the county from me, Abbeyknockmoy, there are four different sites. We could put in the guts of 160 houses there and we could go up then to Monivea in the same parish and put in another 40. That would be 200 houses built in a parish in rural Ireland. If we have the standards, if the local authorities understand what they are and if builders know what they have to build, there will be delivery in local areas. I compliment the Minister of State. He represents a rural area and knows what is required. I know he and the Minister are doing what is expected, which is to ignite rural communities.

As I said, when Irish Water delivers, it does so very well, but, unfortunately, it cannot do it at the scale and speed required. The investment of €12.8 million it put into Athenry just over a year ago has had a phenomenal impact. However, extra capacity was not provided. Enough was put in to address what was there but not enough to allow for extra hundreds of houses. That did not happen. If I am being critical, the shortfall is that Irish Water does not go beyond current need and forecast into the future. However, it reaches gold standard in what it actually does.

A number of years ago, the then Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, made an announcement regarding Clarinbridge, Craughwell and many other parishes around the country whereby local authorities were to submit their ambition and direction of travel and identify areas where they saw opportunities for growth and development. Clarinbridge and Craughwell were two of the locations identified. Unfortunately, we are still at the site selection stage. The reason we have not really moved beyond that is that the local authority, which is local to me, Senator P.J. Murphy and the Leader, does not have enough funding. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that and I know the Minister of State is aware of it. After getting the money, the council now has to come up with another €3 million to enable the works. It is saying it does not have that money. I have no doubt there is a bit of Chinese whispers going on but, in any case, it is not happening. Craughwell could be a very fast-growing town. It is in that centre space between Athenry, Loughrea and Clarinbridge and it could grow if it were enabled to do so. Whatever can be done with previous funding and commitments, where local authorities cannot progress projects due to whatever letter came from Irish Water last June, I ask the Minister of State to look into it and to ensure progress is made. To ensure stability and the regeneration of our towns and villages, in the context of the investment that was made last week, if pressure and pace is put behind it and if we deal with the standardisation, it will be both transformative and a fantastic legacy for the Minister of State to leave.