As we move on to statements on water policy, I am conscious that we are under the watchful eyes of distinguished ex-servicemen, from County Kildare, of course, or many of whom at least served in County Kildare. They are welcome to the Gallery. It is very good to have the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and Deputy Ó Broin here.
Water Policy: Statements
Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle, agus fáilte ar ais. I also welcome the ex-servicemen from the Organisation of National Ex-Service Personnel, ONE. My dad was a proud serviceman in the Defence Forces for 37 years, so the ex-servicemen are very welcome.
I welcome this opportunity to address the House on water policy, which is a key strategic priority for the Government. The past decade has seen significant reform of the water services sector in Ireland, together with a renewed approach to monitoring and regulating the water environment. The Programme for Government: Our Shared Future seeks to advance and build on these reforms, setting out more than 30 commitments specific to water matters that are directed towards overcoming the infrastructural deficits that impact on the provision of safe and secure drinking water supplies, lead to pollution and environmental damage and challenge the achievement of sustainable development across urban and rural Ireland.
Today's statements afford a timely opportunity to consider the current water challenges we face, outline the Government's approach to water policy and update Members on the progress being made. I particularly welcome the opportunity to hear Deputies' comprehensive views on this core area of public policy. I will shortly be joined for the second half of the debate by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, who will make the closing statement as the session concludes.
Ireland has a rich supply of natural water resources that are the envy of many countries. In recent weeks, many communities have seen far too much of the impact of this resource and that of climate change. Adaptation and building in resilience are critically important and we will focus our minds on these aspects. We have, however, a ways to go to ensure our water and wastewater networks and our broader environmental management systems are fully aligned with current and future needs.
Irish Water and local authorities, working together since 2014, have made real progress in consolidating our public water systems nationwide. We now have a coherent national approach to water services and a stronger capacity to deliver and manage investment in water services at scale. A robust policy on funding architecture for public water services is now in place following the report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services, as published in April 2017. Robust governance, accountability and oversight arrangements are in operation, with economic regulation undertaken by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, and environmental regulation overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, while An Fóram Uisce fulfils its important statutory public engagement and advisory function.
While we have relatively good water quality, we face broad and significant challenges in how we protect and care for our water resources and ecosystems. Last month, the EPA published its most recent assessment of water quality in Ireland and updated trends up to the end of 2021. The report identifies some areas of improvement, but in too many areas the trends are going in the wrong direction. The main risk to water quality continues to be excess nutrients, mostly phosphorus and nitrogen, in our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal areas. While the overall water quality trends are going in the wrong direction at a national level, we are seeing good indicators in some areas and in some sectors.
In the case of the priority areas for action, which were selected for special attention in Ireland's national River Basin Management Plan 2018 to 2021, the latest data show that the proportion of improvements within these priority areas exceeded improvements elsewhere. This indicates that when targeted action is taken improvements in water quality can be achieved. We will continue to focus our work on these areas over the next planning cycle and we will include new areas for action.
The performance of Irish Water's treatment plants has been improving, with positive performance reported on EU directive compliance and on EPA priority action areas, as recounted in the EPA's most recent urban wastewater report published a few weeks ago. Improvements, however, are being cancelled out by declines as the proportion of areas improving in status is less than the number of areas in decline.
In terms of bathing water quality, the status report is more favourable, with the EPA's most recent report showing a plenitude of clean and safe natural bathing water amenities, which are increasingly being enjoyed by people all year around. Our national bathing water expert group is working to gather the evidence required to consider how best to protect bathers' health, whether inside or outside of the current bathing water season. Regular year-round water quality monitoring is now in place in the Dublin Bay area. There are, of course, downside risks to extending the bathing water season, as sunlight and rainfall factors may adversely affect water quality during winter. The optimum balance, therefore, must be struck between the length of the bathing season, water quality and health risks if we are to avoid the closure or de-designation of bathing waters locations. It is important to point out that Deputies and Senators have been raising this matter with us in recent months.
The Government's approach to meeting these challenges involves three complementary areas of action. We must complete the transformation of Irish Water as the stand-alone water services authority in public ownership, which will deliver cost-effective water services in keeping with best practices and in response to customer needs. We must continue to upgrade our investment in water services infrastructure in keeping with our EU drinking water and wastewater services obligations and in line with population growth and economic development needs in both urban and rural areas. We must protect our rivers, lakes and groundwater by enhancing our river basin management plan, modernising our legal framework and working across government to address water quality, climate change and biodiversity challenges in an integrated way.
The policy paper on water sector transformation published in February 2021 set out the Government's vision for water services based on the full integration of water services into Irish Water as a single national water services authority in public ownership. The objective is to deliver a world-class public water services authority that meets customer needs, operates in line with best practice, represents value for money and facilitates economic development in urban and rural locations.
As Deputies will be aware, the Water Services (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill is progressing through the Oireachtas and I will take Report Stage of the Bill in the House this evening. The Bill provides for the establishment of Irish Water as the stand-alone national water services authority separated from the Ervia Group. The authority will be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General and will be accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts in recognition of the level of Exchequer funding now provided to Irish Water. The legislation will be enacted before the end of this year and the new arrangements will take effect on 1 January 2023.
Engagement with unions on a framework for future delivery of water services was concluded successfully this summer at the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. This framework will enable Irish Water to work in conjunction with local authorities to complete the integration of public water services into its own organisational structure over a four-year period from 2023 to 2026, inclusive. A comprehensive engagement exercise will be carried out to communicate the framework details directly to staff and ensure that all water services workers will fully understand the options available to them. It is important to note that any transfers of staff to become permanent employees of Irish Water will be on an entirely voluntary basis.
The Department also hosted parallel engagement with unions on policy matters of relevance to workers in the context of the water transformation programme, including a referendum on water ownership. The Government regards public ownership as essential to its vision for water services and this is already legally guaranteed. No change to State ownership of Irish Water is currently possible without majority support in a plebiscite of the people in line with the Water Services Act 2014.
Engagement outcomes shared with unions on 18 July 2022 incorporate the planned approach to bring forward a referendum proposal on water ownership for consideration by the Government in conjunction with the anticipated recommendation of a proposed referendum on housing from the commission on housing. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, looks forward to definitively addressing the referendum matter in this way with Government colleagues in the near future. Taken together, these legislative and policy commitments now bring clarity and certainty on future arrangements for the delivery of water services.
The Government will continue to work closely with all parties to the transformation process, which include the water services workforce and their unions as well as management teams in Irish Water and the local government sector, to ensure the framework for the future is implemented in a balanced manner and is fair and reasonable to all concerned.
In terms of investment, the Water Services Policy Statement 2018-2025 sets out the broad vision and policy objectives for the development of water and wastewater services in Ireland. Irish Water's investment plans are framed in this context. The Department is currently reviewing the statement to ensure that Irish Water's capital investment plans remain in close alignment with the Government's evolving national investment plans under the national development plan, NDP, Housing for All and the updated river basin management plans.
Recent years have seen record levels of Government investment in our water services and this investment will be sustained. The national development plan commits to almost €6 billion of capital investment to be undertaken by Irish Water in the period from 2021 to 2025. Approximately 80% of Irish Water's funding requirement is met through the Government's voted Exchequer investment in Irish Water, which reflects the cost of providing domestic water services. On this basis, €1.56 billion is being provided to Irish Water to meet the cost of domestic water services in 2023. This includes €878 million of capital funding, which is critical to enhance the ongoing significant improvements in our public water and wastewater services and support the delivery of housing as committed to in Housing for All.
This investment is delivering real benefits for citizens right across the country. The Kilkenny regional water supply scheme, for instance, will ensure a safe and reliable drinking water supply for Kilkenny and its surrounding areas. The people of Rathmullan, Milford and Ramelton in north Donegal will benefit from the construction of a new wastewater treatment plant. In the eastern and midlands region, the water supply project will deliver strategic infrastructure to ensure future security of supply in the greater Dublin area, while providing further options for reinforcing future water supplies for communities such as Newport, Borrisokane, Cloughjordan, Mullingar, Carlow, Portlaoise, Navan and Drogheda. In this way, the long-term water supply needs of an entire regional are being secured and future-proofed in a sustainable way to 2050 and beyond.
In terms of wastewater, the greater Dublin drainage project is delivering a major new wastewater treatment facility to serve north County Dublin and parts of counties Kildare and Meath. In conjunction with the significant upgrade of the Ringsend wastewater treatment plant, this key strategic project will safeguard the environment, protect public health and facilitate new housing and development.
Equally important is the Exchequer support provided through the rural water programme for water and wastewater services in areas which are not served by the public water system. The Department is finalising work on the review of the rural water sector which is considering issues such as governance, supervision and monitoring, along with the wider investment needs of the sector to be provided for under the upcoming multi-annual rural water programme. The aim of the working group is to recommend actions now and into the future to ensure an equality of outcomes for those who receive rural water services. I pay tribute to the National Federation of Group Water Schemes, NFGWS, which does amazing work in a voluntary capacity.
Overall investment in water services, whether provided through the public water system managed by Irish Water or under the rural water programme, will be maintained at high levels year on year to ensure security of quality supplies to customers across the country, while achieving greater environmental compliance in keeping with our water framework directive obligations.
To restore water bodies to good status, the two most pressing areas in need of attention are, first, to reduce the excess nutrients being lost from land and discharged into our waterways and, second, to restore our rivers to a near natural physical condition and contribute positively to the co-benefits of water quality, biodiversity and climate. The Government will shortly launch a new revised and strengthened river basin management plan, the third cycle of river basin planning for Ireland dealing with the period up to 2027. This plan will outline a detailed set of over 100 measures centred around the three broad areas for action I described, namely, delivering the single national water services authority, sustained high levels of multi-annual investment and strong protection of water bodies.
Irish Water's capacity to deliver significant capital investment programmes at scale is critical to our plans to reduce the impact from insufficiently treated wastewater discharges over time and will allow us to entirely eliminate the outdated practice of discharging untreated sewage. The new Water Environment (Abstractions and Associated Impoundments) Bill 2022, currently before the Oireachtas, will modernise our legal framework in respect of abstraction, impoundments and other physical changes to water courses. It represents an important step-up in the protection arrangements for our water bodies. Some Deputies have raised concerns about the proposals around a Shannon pipeline to service the greater Dublin area. I share those concerns but that important discussion is for another day.
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, will also continue to work closely to address the causes of diffuse nutrient pollution, including delivering on the new management measures in the nitrates action programme and in the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, strategic plan to address agricultural discharges, the most significant pressure on our water quality. Our new nitrates action programme includes stronger measures to reduce nutrient losses and improve water quality and it works in harmony with the new CAP strategic plan, which has brought ecosystem protection and environmental management to the fore in a positive and constructive manner from a water quality perspective.
I have set out the Government's comprehensive approach to water policy. We have set ourselves a high level of ambition as is clear from the programme for Government. The Government is firmly focused on delivering a world-class water services system together with a robust water environment management system that works for nature and people. I thank Members for their attention and I look forward to their contributions to the debate.
I thank the Minister of State for his opening statement. I thank Deputy Joan Collins, who initially requested the debate, primarily to give us an opportunity in the Dáil to discuss the conclusions and outworking of the negotiations between water services workers, Irish Water, the County and City Management Association, CCMA, and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on the future delivery of domestic water services. Before I make my remarks specifically on this issue, I acknowledge that the Minister of State discussed a wider range of issues. I will not address them today. It is not because they are not equally important. We have dealt with many of them, including water quality in particular and the recent EPA reports, in the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage and I am sure we will return to the Shannon pipeline project in the near future. My focus will be on the future delivery of domestic water and wastewater services on the other side of the WRC negotiations.
I always preface my remarks in these discussions by saying that Sinn Féin's approach to these matters has been shaped by our involvement in the Right to Water movement. We believe people have a right to access good quality drinking water and wastewater on the basis of need and not on the basis of ability to pay and that they should be delivered through the highest quality public service that is attainable. We have also long argued for holding a referendum to enshrine the public ownership of our water services and we look forward to further developments on this front later this year.
When the then Minister, Eoghan Murphy, announced the decision to bring forward the end of the service level agreement between workers and their employers at the creation of Irish Water in 2018, Sinn Féin made it very clear we would not get involved in or interfere with industrial relations matters. They were matters for workers and their trade union representatives, their employers and the Government. Given the huge importance of domestic water and wastewater and the significant political controversies we had under a previous Government, we felt it was right and proper for the Oireachtas housing committee and the Dáil to keep track of the public policy elements of the negotiations. They are matters that affect not only the employers and the workers but the wider public and, therefore, the Oireachtas needs to be involved in them.
We set out very clearly a set of views we had that if the Government was to move in partnership with workers and unions towards the creation of a single utility, a number of conditions had to be met. First and foremost was that any move to end the service level agreement would have to be voluntary. There could be no compulsory redundancies. I welcome the fact that from the outset of the process, the then Minister, Eoghan Murphy, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, made clear that this would be the case. I want to acknowledge, however, that from speaking to water services workers, there continues to be concern that while the agreement in principle sets out that if people remain in local authorities they will retain their existing terms and conditions, these will only be their core terms and conditions and not any additional terms or benefits they have accrued from acting up or taking on additional roles and responsibilities. I said to the Minister of State on the previous occasion we discussed this, and I will say it again, that the Government should clarify, and it would be helpful if it reaffirmed this, that workers who opt to stay with the local authority will retain the full terms and conditions they enjoy at present, despite the fact they may be redeployed from water services to other areas of activity. The sooner this is clarified, the better.
Another issue for us is public ownership. We believe it would be of enormous benefit for the Government to set the date for the referendum. I welcome the fact that SIPTU, Fórsa, Unite and other trade unions recently launched a very important campaign urging the Government to set the date for the referendum. This could be one of those very valuable opportunities whereby we could have a very good public debate on why water as a utility is different from other utilities. It is so fundamental to human well-being and community life that the idea of it being a public good in public ownership protected by the Constitution makes eminent sense. I press the Minister of State to urge his colleague to say a little more about the timelines for the referendum because it is of particular importance to us and water services workers and their families.
One of the big challenges and concerns many of us have with the move towards a single utility is the impact of the transfer of water services fully from local authorities to Irish Water Uisce Éireann, as it will be formally known once the legislation passes through the Houses. We have seen a hollowing out of services delivered directly by local authorities over the years. Housing by and large is no longer primarily delivered through local authorities. It is primarily achieved through purchased turnkey properties or Part 5. Direct labour crews for maintenance have been run down in preference to contracted work. Waste management is no longer with local authorities. While the service level agreement means that workers continue to be employed by the local authority, albeit under the direction of Irish Water, if this process is completed, that will no longer be the case. This creates a real problem because local authorities are best at providing good quality services to local communities.
No matter what the final configuration of the single utility, it must continue to have footprint in our local authorities. There are depots, offices and connections between communities and long-standing water services workers that are better located, irrespective of who the employer is, inside the infrastructure of the local authority. Also from a planning and housing point of view, it makes much more sense if the housing department, the planning department and the water services department, even if it is an Irish Water-controlled water services department, are all co-located in one building. We see this with some aspects of our mental health services whereby HSE staff and local authority staff work in the same building. Therefore, the continued physical presence of water services workers in the infrastructure of local authorities is key. I encourage the Minister of State to give us more information on all of this in further remarks.
Concern has been expressed about the final legal status of the new utility. The Minister has, as per the outworkings of the WRC negotiations, restated the commitment to public ownership but, of course, this can take many different forms, as the Minister of State knows. In addition to the issue of the terms and conditions of the workers who may opt to transfer to Uisce Éireann, there is also the issue of those workers who will be employed at a future point in time. This is particularly relevant because local authorities are not honouring the existing WRC service level agreement on the replacement of existing staff. Local authorities are assuming it can be dealt with by Irish Water at a later stage. What are the guarantees as regards terms and conditions for these future workers? Will they have the same full level of protection that they would get if they were covered by public sector pay agreements?
Clearly this is a debate of enormous public importance for the terms and conditions of the workers, their families and their communities, the final configuration of the service in terms of its relationship with local authorities and the final legal status. Some of these are not clear from the remarks of the Minister of State, previous debates on this or the second document that has emerged but has yet to be formally published, although it is in widespread circulation, on foot of the WRC talks. The point I really want to emphasise is as follows. There is still a lot of concern about the future delivery of water services. There is still a lot of legacy mistrust arising from some of the policy decisions enacted or attempted to be enacted by previous Governments. The Government would be doing itself an enormous favour, as well as doing our water services and the State an enormous favour, if it set a date and said it was committed to holding a referendum and intends to bring forward legislation at a certain point in time.
I fully accept it would make much more sense to hold two referendums on the same day. I would be more than happy to spend a considerable amount of my time campaigning for enshrining in the Constitution the right to housing and public ownership of our water services. Our understanding is that the commission on housing will report back to the Government very soon. We are very hopeful that it will recommend that the Government proceed to enshrine the right to housing in the Constitution. If it does so in the timeline it set out, which is November, I would like to see the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, bring the memorandum referenced by the Minister of State to Cabinet this year. Many of us have a real concern that while Fianna Fáil's position on referendums on the right to housing and water has shifted somewhat, Fine Gael is still implacably opposed to both.
We do not and will not know that until the memorandum on the two referendums is brought forward. The worry, however, is that the memo may come after the rotation of Taoiseach. I am not sure whether the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, will be as amenable to the eminently sensible suggestions made by the trade unions, the housing commission, Sinn Féin and some members of Fianna Fáil. For this reason, we need to set the date and hold not one but two referendums. We need to ensure, as the Minister of State said, that we have a world-class public water service providing the highest quality drinking water to communities, families and businesses, that we undo decades of neglect and underinvestment and, crucially, that it is publicly owned so that people will forever more have access to water and wastewater services free at the point of delivery based on need and not on ability to pay.
Last month, the EPA published its 2021 report on urban wastewater treatment. It found that only half of sewerage is treated to EU standards with more than 2.5 million tonnes of raw sewage being pumped into our seas and rivers every year. This pollutes our environment and poses a real health risk to the public. The most recent EU monitor report found that we have a compliance rate of 44% for the proportion of water that meets the requirements of the directive compared with an EU average of 76%. Raw sewage is being discharged daily into 32 of our towns and villages, eight of which are in my home county of Donegal, namely, Burtonport, Coolatee, Falcarragh, Kerrykeel, Kilcar, Moville, Ramelton and Rathmullan.
As the Minister of State knows, raw sewage contains bacteria, viruses and parasites that can cause illness. The fact that so many in my county of Donegal are exposed to these risks is completely unacceptable. In 2015, seven years ago, I submitted a complaint to the European Commission regarding the State's failure to deliver a sewerage scheme in my home town of Gweedore. On receipt of that complaint, the Commission took infringement proceedings against the State. Seven years later, the main scheme is yet to commence and only the demonstrations scheme, with 50 houses connected, has been completed.
It is deeply concerning that it is not planned to connect five of the towns in Donegal - Coolatee, Falcarragh, Moville, Ramelton and Rathmullan - to a treatment plant until the second half of this decade. The EPA has drawn attention to the fact that Irish Water has produced various plans and timeframes over the years to eliminate discharges of raw sewage but often changes these plans and extends its timeframes to complete this work, thereby prolonging the risks to the environment and public health. We have seen that happen far too often. This does not instil faith in these deadlines ever being met. They should, in fact, be accelerated.
I am pleading with the Minister of State on behalf of citizens in Donegal. They cannot accept being, yet again, an outlier in the provision of basic services and infrastructure. Irish Water and the Minister must ensure the infrastructure needed to stop raw sewage discharges is built in the interest of public health for the people of Donegal. We will not wait until the end of this decade for that to happen.
I want to raise a few issues related to my constituency of Meath West. Thousands of residents in Trim and Rathmolyon have had their water restricted for the past 11 days and this looks set to continue throughout this week. This has caused huge distress to the people and businesses affected as they are left without running water for long periods. Irish Water communication seems to entail posts on social media platforms. The only way many older people and others who do not use social media find out is when they turn on the tap and find there is no water. That is not good enough.
The Trim water treatment plant requires delivery of a part from the United Kingdom, for which it is still waiting 11 days later. If there was any urgency on the part of Irish Water, how could it wait on a part for 11 days in this day and age? This is affecting thousands of people and businesses. It is a joke. The treatment plant in Trim is outdated and needs to be upgraded urgently. I ask that this be done as soon as possible.
In other parts of the Meath West constituency people have been waiting for a long time for Irish Water to release funds for projects. People in Ballivor have been waiting for an upgrade for the past few years. Water tankers have been filling up the reservoir at different times of the year. While it is supposedly on the list of projects that are to go to tender, the Ballivor project needs to be fast-tracked as it, too, affects thousands of people.
At the other end of my constituency, in Westmeath, there is a section of old pipes less than a kilometre in length in the Castlepollard-Fore-Collinstown area that keeps breaking and causing misery for people. We need Irish Water to release funding to address this. I have been on to the council for years. We have water services in the Meath and Westmeath local authorities that do their best. However, when funding is not released for these projects, what can they do? The Minister of State must engage with Irish Water on behalf of the people and businesses of Meath West to address these issues as a matter of urgency and to release funding.
I am glad of this opportunity to speak to the Minister of State. There are three things I want him to do. He needs to tell Irish Water to sort out the legacy debt and the leak credits for the group water schemes. We have been begging Irish Water to do that for months and years. In addition, the above-ground assets, such as reservoirs and pumping stations, also need to be transferred from the group water schemes to Irish Water. This is very simple and must be done immediately. Irish Water also needs to target the resources on the ground to manage the additional workload to get things done.
I think the Minister of State referred to Newport earlier. It is absurd that businesses in Newport are being asked to pay to pollute Clew Bay. They have to pay the price of not having a proper scheme and then they are forced to pay by Irish Water. That has to stop. Businesses are rightly asking why they should have to pay for water going out. They will gladly pay for water coming in but they want to know why they should pay for water going out in order to do that. This scheme has to be accelerated and, in the meantime, businesses should no longer be forced to pollute the bay.
I am glad the issue in Murrisk seems to be finally coming to a conclusion after all these years. I welcome the fact that hundreds of families in the area may have water by the end of next year. I commend the people in Downpatrick Head. We have been trying to get water for them for more than a decade. People outside Mayo and rural Ireland would not believe what happens in these rural areas in that they do not have something as basic as water. That must be fixed. I also refer to the case of Cleragh, near Kiltimagh, where 34 families have been blocked from accessing a water scheme.
These issues must be sorted and Irish Water, with the Government, has to sort them out. Since Irish Water was set up, however, the Government seems to have taken a hands-off approach and I am fearful of that. The Government is responsible for providing clean water to our citizens and ensuring our bays and communities are not polluted. Much needs to be done in those areas. I commend the group water schemes but we have to lift the debt off them. I ask the Minister of State not to leave this Chamber today and do nothing. These measures need to be actioned. Sinn Féin will follow up on each of them in the same way we have done with other communities. Communities in Mayo and other parts of rural Ireland deserve better.
I want to discuss issues in my constituency of Cork North-Central, where there are significant issues with the water quality and brown drinking water in people's houses. I have received calls from people in areas such as Ballyvolane, Gurranabraher, Farranree, Sunday's Well and right across the city saying discoloured or brown water has been coming from their taps in recent months. Irish Water has admitted that this is due to adding too many chemicals to clean water by mistake. I have been communicating back and forth with Irish Water in recent months and every time I have been told that the system will be flushed. This might provide clean water for a day or two. This is not good enough, however, because the brown water returns thereafter. This water is not drinkable. Irish Water has told people to run their taps. That is not good enough. People deserve better. They deserve clean drinking water. They should not have to contact Deputies to follow up with Irish Water. They should have clean drinking water in their homes.
Irish Water confirmed that it does not let vulnerable people know when the water is brown. These are people who may have issues with their sight or intellectual disabilities. They may be vulnerable or very old. The only way they can find out if they have brown water is from Irish Water.
They are vulnerable people. There is an onus on Irish Water to make sure those people have clean drinking water and, if not, that they know about it. There are major issues with Irish Water.
I also want to recognise the huge effort made by water workers in Cork and nationally, especially in pushing for a referendum on putting water services in public ownership, which we support. These workers also want clarity on their terms and conditions of employment if they remain in local authorities or move. I have great respect for these workers, who are doing the work on the ground. Moving forward, we need the referendum to be delivered as soon as possible. There are huge concerns that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will not deliver a referendum. What is the date for the referendum?
Fáiltím roimh an deis labhairt ar an gceist seo mar go bhfuil go leor de mhuintir na Gaillimhe céasta le cúrsaí uisce. Bhí fadhbanna leis an maingainéis ar Inis Bó Finne agus sa Spidéal le tamaillín anuas agus cé go bhfuil siad réitithe sa Spidéal bhí fadhbanna i gcomhair i bhfad.
The water issue on Inishbofin has been ongoing for a number of months. With the lack of clarity on whether the water was safe to drink, there was a boil notice which was changed to a do not consume notice. The islanders still have questions and have not received answers. While this particular issue has been ongoing for a number of months, in reality there have been problems for years. A long-term solution is needed.
Islanders have complained about issues with immersion boilers and electric showers. Water services on our offshore islands require a long-term solution and strategy. I understand that is not something that can happen overnight, but it is something we could do far better on and we need to focus on. One islander I spoke to today told me she had travelled to North Macedonia to view its water services. She heard it had not had rain since last March. It is a far less well-off country than Ireland, yet has been able to provide fresh water. It was interesting to hear that comparison.
Caithimid déileáil leis na deacrachtaí uisce atá ann ar na hoileáin amach ón gcósta. Teastaíonn straitéis fadtéarmach ina leith. Tuigim go dtógfaidh sé sin tamaillín ach caithfear déileáil leis agus caithfear breathnú air. Má bhreathnaímid ar Inis Oírr, mar shampla, samhradh i ndiaidh samhraidh bíonn an t-uisce múchta i rith na hoíche agus sin fadhb ollmhór, ach go háirithe ós rud é go bhfuil i bhfad níos mó turasóirí ann agus chuile rud. Léiríonn sin go gcaithimid déileáil leis. Ansin tá an fadhb séarachais ar Inis Mór. Feicimid go bhfuil séarachas fós ag scaoileadh amach ar Inis Mór agus tá baol mór ann ó thaobh sláinte de freisin. Caithimid breathnú ar an gcóras séarachais agus ar na fadbhanna uisce ar na hoileáin amach ón gcósta. Teastaíonn straitéis fadtéarmach dóibh sin ar fad.
Water is a most precious resource. Much has been written about the fact that the next war that will happen on this planet will be not over oil but rather over water. We on this island are notionally blessed to have an abundance of water. As every council engineer and Irish Water engineer will tell us, there is a fundamental difference between water falling from the sky and water arriving treated and potable in our taps.
We should begin by acknowledging that we have failed, as a country, to provide adequate water and wastewater treatment across our nation. The establishment of Irish Water was to be the fundamental shift. We were to have a national utility resourced to do this once and for all. Many of our people are used to going to Spain where there is no rain for weeks and months on end, yet when they go to the beaches they can wash sand from their feet and shower without difficulty. I come from the sunny south east. If we have three weeks of sunshine in the summer, we have no water in our taps. That cannot be right. We need to deal with that historic deficit.
Like others, I would like to deal specifically with the situation in my constituency. I ask the Minister of State to focus on the Wexford town water supply. The most recent boil water notice was issued on 21 October and lifted on 26 October. There was another alert last Friday. This is happening during the peak of the Wexford Opera Festival, where we have thousands of visitors from all over the world yet cannot provide people with a decent water supply without having to boil water. It is shocking. This is an ongoing issue.
As I said, if we have too little rain we have no water in the summer and if we have too much rain the overflow cannot be treated and the water supply is not safe. Too little or too much rain will ensure that we do not have a decent water supply in the town of Wexford. There is a solution to this. We had hoped for an immediate solution in the form of ultraviolet light treatment, but apparently that will not work and more substantial treatment is required. It cannot be the case that 25,000 people are without a water supply or on a boil water notice every second month. The Minister of State is from a neighbouring constituency and I ask him to ensure that the capital provision is provided to deal with this matter once and for all.
The new utility will be a stand-alone entity. Like Deputy Ó Broin, the Labour Party perspective was to allow the elected representatives of workers in the trade union to deal with this and come to their conclusions. There are overarching issues. When a leak on a public road outside of a gate is reported to Irish Water, Wexford local authority workers who are contracted to Irish Water will deal with that immediately and resolve the leak. However, if the leak is on the inside of a gate, under the first fix programme Irish Water will provide a contractor to do the work but it is taking weeks for them to arrive. A leak in the water supply outside of a yard can be fixed immediately but a leak in a yard inside the boundary of the property means people have to wait. In the most recent case I dealt with, with all due respect to the Ceann Comhairle, we had to wait for a contractor to come from Kildare to sort out the problem. I am deeply concerned-----
It needs to be a good contractor.
I am sure he was an excellent contractor, if he had only come quickly. My issue was not the work but rather the alacrity with which it was done. As I said, we will leave these matters to the negotiations of the trade union movement. My concern is that when the full work is transferred to the single utility, Uisce Éireann, we do not compound the problem. There were 50 individual leaks on Coolballow Road in Wexford and there had to be a campaign before action was taken. We need to do better.
As far back as July 2016 our former colleague, Willie Penrose, published a Bill to amend the Constitution to ensure public ownership of our public utilities. This would have covered not just our public water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure but also our gas and electricity transmission networks. Seven years on, we are no closer to seeing such a referendum being proposed. It has always been our position that our water infrastructure should remain in public ownership. It is most important to note that there was never any proposal to privatise it despite a lot of rhetoric on the issue. Water is a public good that ought to be accessible and State-run in perpetuity to ensure the State is resilient in the event of any crisis in supply or distribution.
With respect to the Minister of State, I have heard nothing about a referendum. The wording of the Minister of State's speech is not specific as to when the referendum would take place. We need a specific date and time or some timelines to ensure the referendum takes place.
It is vitally important to maintain public confidence by ensuring it is retained in State ownership.
I will address the quality of supply in the Cork region. I will name places such as Inchigeelagh, Ballycotton, Castletownshend, Whitegate, Aghada, Mitchelstown, Rathcormack, Kinsale and Clonakilty from where raw sewage is going into the sea. There are continuous boil water notices in places such as Aghada and Whitegate, as there is in the little enclave of Killavullen. Good and decent people live in Killavullen who, up to a few years ago, never had a boil water notice. As the local Deputy representing that area, I still cannot get an answer as to why there are boil water notices in Killavullen. I still cannot get a definitive answer from Irish Water with regard to Whitegate or Aghada.
Cork county councillors will tell the Minister of State the same. It was reported by Sean O'Riordan in yesterday's Irish Examiner that they are extremely frustrated by the lack of engagement by Irish Water on matters such as boil water notices. The quality of communications from Irish Water has diminished substantially in the past 12 months. It is very hard to get up-to-the-minute information. If we are trying to serve our constituents to the best of our ability, they deserve answers as to why there are boil water notices in Killavullen and in places such as Whitegate and Aghada.
We have not been able to define or pin down the nature of the problem. Updates need to be provided and proper answers given to public representatives in this House and local authorities. The quality of the engagement is exceptionally poor. Dare I say it, every time I put down a parliamentary question to seek information from the Minister's Department, I am told it is not a matter for the Department. In the most recent reply, dated yesterday, I was told that it is not a matter for the Department, that all operational matters are a matter for Irish Water, and that the Department "maintains an ongoing engagement with Irish Water regarding strategic, financial and general operational matters". If that is the case, I suggest the Minister's Department is answerable to this House and to individual Deputies when we put down parliamentary questions as to why there are boil water notices or when we seek information. I ask the Minister to reverse engines on the policy of not informing us, as Members, because we need to be able to inform our constituents. However, the fundamental question is why Killavullen, as one example, has boil water notices. What is the reason for those boil water notices and why are they not being fixed? Why is the problem not being resolved? Why has the issue in Whitegate and Aghada not been resolved?
With regard to a problem with Irish Water not responding to queries from you or anybody else, it is normal for me to disallow questions on operational matters. If Irish Water is not answering you and you let me know that, we will refer the questions to the Minister. I will not disallow the questions and will ask the Minister to answer. However, a public utility should not put the Minister in that position. Let the message go abroad that this is how we approach it.
A Cheann Comhairle, thank you very much for that response. If the Department maintains a relationship on operational matters, I respectfully suggest there is a level of accountability on the part of the Minister to this House with regard to operational matters.
Feel free to brief me directly on that and we will monitor how it proceeds.
I welcome the opportunity to make statements on water policy. Despite many of the complaints I hear about Irish Water and individual towns and locations, we need to look at this in a broader perspective. We would all have been taught about the hydrological cycle in school. We know where water comes from. We know that water is a finite and limited resource which is under severe pressure in this country. These statements are fitting in a week when COP27 is trying to address the global nature of climate change and its impact on countries across the planet. For example, changing weather patterns will impact on the hydrological cycle, on the amount of water that falls in this country and on how we store it. An impact will be felt nationally and globally.
We seem to take water for granted in this country. We think we have an abundance of it. I think that is because we get considerable rainfall. However, water is expensive to store, treat and distribute. It is also expensive to maintain our very intricate network of drinking water pipes to our homes and the wastewater discharge pipes that come from our houses and end up in rivers, lakes and our coastal waters, thereby causing pollution.
The Sustainable Water Network, SWAN, An Taisce, the Water Advisory Body and Teagasc appeared before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage when we were looking at issues of water quality and impacts in Ireland. I will read SWAN's synopsis of the last river basin management plan. It said that "an interim assessment of the previous river basin management plan reveals that only two out of ten expected outcomes ... have been achieved"; that "nitrate and phosphate pollution has increased significantly since 2013" and that "we have lost 96% of our most pristine rivers in the past 30 years".
When we hear complaints about the quality of water that comes out of our taps, we have to look at the source of that water. It is coming from our rivers, lakes and groundwater. If we continually carry out practices that pollute those water sources, we will have those problems at the end of the pipe where it comes into our houses. Deputies are quite right to raise those problems. Our water supply is on a knife-edge. The pressures on our river water quality and our water supply are up there with the challenges we face in biodiversity and climate. When we see disruptions in water supply, boil water notices and the remedial action list for the trihalomethanes that are in our water from excessive organic loadings, we need to stand up, take account and look at the sources contributing to that water damage.
I ask the Minister of State to take on board a couple of my concerns with regard to water policy that we could bring into our overall water policy. I wish to see greater funding provided for the testing of nitrates in our water to assist our farmers. I do not believe any of our farmers wish to pollute water but the reality is that agriculture is contributing to water pollution. The draft river basin management plan states:
... the principal causes of the decline in Ireland’s water quality are the increasing loss into water of polluting phosphorus and nitrogen from farmland ... [and] inadequately treated waste water.
That is the responsibility of Irish Water. We have heavily modified many of our river courses, which impacts on biodiversity and marine and aquatic ecology. We need to address hydromorphology to comply with the water framework directive and to have those free-flowing rivers as required under the nature restoration plan. How much time do I have left?
Forty-five seconds.
I request that Irish Water set out a very clear timeline for all of its wastewater treatment plants and drinking water plants. What action is required to bring them up to the standard for discharge and drinking water? What is the funding requirement and what are the timelines? Those need to be set out. It will help us comply with the water framework directive and make our river basin management all the more easy to implement. The Minister of State is the right Minister for the job. I know that he has a deep understanding of water quality and aquatic ecology and I thank him for the work he and his Department officials have done so far.
It was great to see the Ceann Comhairle back a few moments ago. I wish him well. I am glad to have the opportunity to speak at this debate this afternoon. I consider there to be two wings to Irish Water. The first is Irish Water "Incorporated" which is very frustrating to deal with and the second is on-the-ground crews that are very helpful in the community.
I will speak about Irish Water "Incorporated" for a moment. It is up there with the National Transport Authority, NTA, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, and the HSE. They are all quangos. It has put a huge degree of separation between central Government, local government and the people. Irish Water is very tricky to deal with and when you manage to get through to it the call centre in Cork does not have on-the-ground knowledge. Staff there could tell you a water leak in Kilrush is a result of a sprung pipe in Meelick, which is 60 miles away. You get ludicrous information like that and Irish Water thinks that is adequate at a time when a community has gone three, four or five days without a water supply. It is not good enough. The call centre is the first point of contact people have with this. It is not fit for purpose and it never has been in the nine years since its inception in July 2013.
On the point around engagement, Irish Water does not engage with local authorities. I do not know what it is like elsewhere in the country but I was a councillor in Clare in 2013 when Irish Water was set up. All of us from the Munster region were brought down to the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork for a briefing session. Deputy Gould was also a councillor then and attended that day. He came in the back door of the hotel holding placards and thumping his chest and he disrupted the whole meeting. I have never seen the like of it. That was a high-level briefing about the transfer of assets from local authorities to Irish Water. It had to be abandoned. That was the last public meeting the Irish Water hierarchy had with any local authority in open session. Since then the hierarchy has had covert briefings and that is not good enough from a local authority point of view.
I also have huge grievances with the suggestion we should extract water from Lough Derg to serve the greater Dublin area. In 2019 the leak rate in Dublin was 42%. If we bring this grandiose pipeline across Clare, Tipperary and Offaly and all the way over to Dublin we are only feeding Europe's largest sprinkler system. That would be retrograde. It is not environmental or sustainable. It ignores the fact almost half the water in Dublin leaves the pipe network every single day and trickles off into the ground.
There are a few programmes at home I hope will progress. We got good news the other day that the upgrading of the Elton Court sewage treatment plant in Meelick will get underway at the end of this month. This is a key piece of enabling work to allow Ballycannon, which is another housing estate in that community, to connect to the mains system. The system the estate's residents have been living with for years is decrepit and unfit for purpose, so this work is key. Another project is the upgrade of the water mains from Westbury out to Parteen in Clare. Phase 1 of that was done earlier this year and has transformed things. However, there is still a sizable amount of that community, from Larkin's Cross to O'Connor's Cross, that has had 15 outages in the last year alone. There is a quite comprehensive capital plan for this but it needs a nudge and a push. I have been speaking to Irish Water officials again today and those in Clare County Council but I ask the Minister of State to drive that on and help us deliver that.
As a final point, there is a community in west Clare, Glendine, that has a group water scheme which is 28 km long. I have never come across the likes of this before. It is called a daisy chain scheme because there are little splinter schemes going off it left, right and centre. The people in that scheme are facing five days now without water. These are current issues. This is not something that happened last year. I am speaking about villages and parts of Ireland that are currently without water. There is huge ineptitude in the hierarchy of Irish Water and it needs to grasp this. We need more of these schemes to be taken into full public charge and run properly. We should not always be burdening a local committee or secretary with trying to run a massive piece of infrastructure.
I thank my colleagues for sharing their time. I welcome that the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, is in the position he is in because this is an issue he knows well. It is one of those very rare issues upon which I find myself in agreement with most of the Green Party policy.
In my part of the world, which the Minister of State knows well, there is the issue of intensive agriculture and its role in upgrading water quality, particularly that in our watercourses, streams and rivers. An issue I have tried to raise with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and which I hope the Minister of State will be able to flag given his position, is the need to ensure there is some sort of promotion or extra emphasis given to areas of intensive agriculture where there are open watercourses and promoting, developing and expanding grant relief measures for intensive farmers to ensure they have the necessary storage capacity. Huge leaps and bounds have been made during my time in the Oireachtas in the management of farms across the country. The period has seen many environmental improvements and it has often been led by work from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on ensuring grant aid is available. Farmers have shown time and again that if supports are there they will act. It is the same when it comes to the issue of water quality. There should be some extra weighting or promotion given to people who are in especially vulnerable areas and are engaged in intensive agriculture. That sector will follow because it tends to be the most progressive. The farmers who are in a position to ensure those works are carried out are generally farming full-time.
Deputies have spoken about deficiencies in their own constituencies and the Minister of State will be aware of those in Kilkenny. We have boil water notices quite regularly, alas, in places like Clogh, Moneenroe and Castlecomer in north Kilkenny. In recent days we have even had notices for the Bennettsbridge and Ballyragget supplies. The notices have been lifted but thousands of houses being left without a supply of water for a period of days is not a situation any organisation, including Irish Water, can stand over. I fully agree with Deputy Matthews on Irish Water drawing up and confirming lists of works that need to be done on both water and wastewater treatment. It does not need to be an exact list with the full details and costs but it must have a rough estimate of costings for works that are outstanding and need to be done. Those are figure Irish Water should already have rough estimates of within the organisation. It would be a very welcome development. On wastewater treatment specifically, Deputies, including the Acting Chair, have outlined the villages and towns across the country that continue to pump raw sewage or almost completely untreated sewage into public waterways or the sea. That position is untenable into the future and Irish Water should include that in any list of necessary measures it draws up.
This issue has been debated for decades but we still have not got a water system that is fit for purpose. The pace at which the latest upgrade works are being carried out is, I think we can all agree, very frustrating. Questions need to be asked about why it will be 2046 before all lead piping in the system is replaced. This was highlighted in a recent EPA report. This is a public health issue and the replacement programme needs to be accelerated.
I will move to a few local issues. Constituents who are unable to move into their new homes have regularly been in touch with my office, and likely Deputy Cian O'Callaghan's office as well. They have been getting delay after delay because there is a problem with getting these new housing estates connected to the water supply. I appreciate this is a big issue across Dublin but it is totally unacceptable. These people deserve better. Another issue I had this week was a constituent contacting us to let us know her whole block of apartments had been disconnected. She did not receive any information from Irish Water telling her this was going to happen. When she tried to find out why this happened she was told nothing. This is totally unacceptable and it is happening regularly.
Let us go back to 2014 when Fine Gael and Labour attempted to privatise our water system. Citizens organised and fought the Government of the day to roll back on its plans.
Ever since then, there have been calls for a referendum to keep water in public ownership. The trade union movement has launched a campaign, Keep Water Public, which calls on the Government to name a date for a referendum. The campaign's demands are simple, namely, that the Government needs to set a date for a referendum to enshrine public ownership of our water system in the Constitution. The Minister of State said he is open to such a referendum but he needs to back up that statement. He must present citizens with the opportunity to insert the right to water in our Constitution as soon as possible.
There are people in my constituency of Kildare North who cannot move into their homes because of water supply issues. That is not a problem just for people in my colleague's area.
I make my contribution as a member of the climate committee in the week of COP27 and the growing public awareness on this island and globally that water, and access to it, is something we can no longer take for granted. I attended a public meeting in Maynooth last night. My constituents across north Kildare are in no doubt that we face a changed world. We are ready to play our part in it. My constituents know, as do all of us in this House, that even in the most developed and sophisticated parts of the world, water shortages arising from drought, caused and made worse by climate change, are becoming a feature of modern life. It is not just heat and drought that are the problem. The catastrophic flooding that has arrived in Europe can damage pipes and systems and make water supplies unusable.
We are told that by 2030, the gap between global demand and supply of fresh water is expected to reach 40%. Water is going to become a hot political issue in the EU, just as it already is in other parts of the world, such as in the Nile region. While COP27 is taking place in Egypt, it is worth remembering the long-running issues between that country, Sudan and Ethiopia regarding the huge hydroelectric dam on the River Nile. The Horn of Africa is gripped by famine, the graphic details of which we heard about at a recent meeting of the climate committee in which the issues of loss and damage played a big part in the discussion. This year, the US envoy for the Horn of Africa met with Egyptian officials to find a way, under the African Union, to guarantee the long-term needs of all the people, in various countries, living along and relying on the River Nile for their water.
Water is access. It is food, health and wealth and it also contributes towards peace and power. Politically, I am 100% opposed to the privatisation of water. If the Government does not give us our referendum and if it wants to go back to water protests on the street, the women of Ireland are well ready for it. If we look at the privatisation of energy, transport, healthcare and childcare, we see we are playing with fire if we privatise water. It is essential to life.
Thank you, Deputy.
People can live for a few weeks without food but we can only live for a few days without water. We reject the idea that it would be privatised and profitised. Sinn Féin will oppose every measure to move water out of public ownership.
I apologise to the Deputy but I must keep to the time restrictions and ask that she conclude.
Before I talk about the importance of a referendum, setting a date for it and the need for us strongly to oppose any possibility of privatisation of our water and wastewater infrastructure, I support the comments by my constituency colleague, Deputy Mitchell, regarding the problems for people moving into homes because of delays in water connections. It is completely and utterly unacceptable.
Regarding lead pipes, we have a public health situation in which people's health is being seriously affected. The programme in place to rectify this issue is moving so slowly that it will not address the problem for many people for many decades to come. It is utterly unacceptable. The volume of information available to people with leads pipes in their homes is not acceptable. The line from Irish Water is that if homeowners replace the pipes on their side, it will replace them on its side. I know of numerous instances where people do not have lead pipes on their side but there are lead pipes outside their homes and they are not being replaced. I am aware of a case in which Irish Water has replaced lead pipes on half a road in an estate in which all the houses were built at the same time. Half the pipes were replaced and then Irish Water told the remaining householders that it is not sure whether there are lead pipes in the area. This is an estate built 100 years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, lead pipes were used for the entire estate. All of that creates worry and anxiety for communities and it really is not acceptable.
Before I deal with the substantive point about the need for a referendum and a date for it, I refer to the value that workers in water services give by way of the work they do. I saw that at first-hand when I was a member of a local authority. The knowledge and expertise these workers have built up of the water network in their areas is second to none. That should be to the forefront of the minds of members of the Government as they delay the holding of a referendum. One of the ways the Government could support and value those workers properly, as they should be supported, is by naming a date now for a referendum.
We in the Social Democrats fully support the trade union campaign to name a date. I tabled an amendment on Committee Stage of the Water Services (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2022 that would have ensured the Government had to set a timeline for naming the date. Unfortunately, the Government voted it down. I have tabled a similar amendment on Report Stage this evening and I call on the Minister of State not to oppose it. I ask that he back our amendment to ensure a timeline for a referendum is set.
I want to make a wider point about how utterly essential water is to our lives. As we all know, we simply cannot live without water. It is essential to cooking, washing and running a business or farm. More than anything else in the world, apart from the air we breathe, we need water to live. That is how essential it is. Water is a natural resource that belongs to all of us and it is critical to every aspect of our lives, our economy and our society. It is crucial to food production, factories, schools and businesses. Any attempts to privatise water and make profit from it should never be countenanced. It is far too important ever to allow any risk of it falling into private hands for profit and allowing those private interests to hold us to ransom by owning our water and wastewater infrastructure.
That should never be allowed to happen but as long as we do not have it dealt with in our Constitution, there is always a risk it will. I made a point at the committee that if, heaven forbid, Ireland ends up in an economic situation in which we have a repeat of the troika coming in and the International Monetary Fund being in town, having it enshrined in the Constitution that public ownership of water is guaranteed means there could be no insistence by such parties on privatisation or any other changes. That would simply be off the table. We would not need to speculate about the intentions of different political parties in government and so on. Let us protect ourselves once and for all as a country by enshrining this matter in the Constitution to ensure that, no matter what happens, the privatisation route can never be gone down by any political party or Government.
The experience of water privatisation around the world has been an absolute and utter disaster, so much so that there are 235 places globally where water has been renationalised and remunicipalised. That was done because water privatisation led to a disaster in investment in public infrastructure. I offer two examples of this. In Berlin, after water was privatised, there were huge deficits in the maintenance of the infrastructure. At the same time, the profits of the private companies that bought shareholdings in that infrastructure went up sharply. This resulted in a popular vote of the people of Berlin demanding that water be brought back into public ownership. That was done at great cost to the public in having to buy back those shares. Similarly, in Paris, the privatising of water led to price hikes in water charges that were in no way justified by the low levels of investment in infrastructure.
In 24 years of privatisation of the water supply in Paris the price of water increased by 174% while the profits of the owners soared. Do we need to know anything more about water privatisation and the absolute madness of it that we should never countenance? The first year of taking water back into public ownership in Paris saw public control efficiency savings of 35%, reduction in costs of 8% in households and increased investment in infrastructure. This goes to show that public ownership of water infrastructure, and it should never be charged for, is and can be much more efficient than private sector control.
We need a referendum to enshrine in the Constitution the right to water and access public ownership of water resources. The Government is more than half way through office and as yet no date has been set. How difficult is it for the Government to do this? What is stopping the Government from doing this? Why must we wait any longer? I support having the referendum on housing on the same day. Let us name a date and get on with this. We run the risk that this Government will run out of its term of office before anything is done on this which means all the commitments on this would be meaningless. Is ceart daonna é an t-uisce. Water is a human right.
I have one other point to make about why water services and infrastructure ended up in public ownership in the first place. As we all know in this House it happened due to public health reasons. A lack of public control and investment in water and wastewater infrastructure was disastrous in regard to spread of disease. It was a disaster for the slum housing that existed in this city. The Public Health Act 1848 was passed, obviously not in this House, and gave local authorities discretionary power over drainage and water supply. That recognised how incredibly important water and, indeed, wastewater is to our very existence and public health. Before proper investment was in place and before the clearance of slum housing, which was replaced with good quality local authority housing, there was widespread disease including cholera in slum housing because of the lack of public investment and control over water supply. That is why it was brought into public ownership and there was public investment. While thankfully the incredibly bad housing conditions, those slum conditions, no longer exist, we should never lose sight of how important this is and why it is crucially important that water infrastructure is kept in public ownership and that this is enshrined in the Constitution. Safe access to water and, indeed, wastewater literally is and was a matter of life or death for people in this country.
I welcome this important debate on water policy. Developing a water policy with so many complex issues and competing demands is not an easy task. Over the past decade we started to make some inroads. The two main issues are to provide safe, clean water to all of us and to treat all our wastewater so that when it is returned to the environment it does not cause damage to our health, to the rivers and seas or to other fresh water supplies. A multitude of other issues are involved in developing a water policy. I will try to address a few of them in the short time available to me.
The first priority of a water policy is to ensure provision of clean, safe water. We encountered a number of issues in recent years the most crucial being the contamination of existing supplies by a number of different factors and consumers not being alerted to this contamination immediately. We must ensure that adequate warning systems are in place and that consumers are alerted to any possible contamination immediately. I am aware that work is ongoing on replacing and rehabilitating old asbestos and cast iron water mains throughout the network and replacing lead pipes to individual houses. It might be advisable to report on a yearly basis the ongoing progress being made on these schemes.
I congratulate Irish Water on the completion in recent months of a new reservoir at Rockmount and complete replacement of the water mains from Mullagh to Milltown Malbay. This will provide a safe, secure and reliable source of water to this part of west Clare, which has had many breaks in service over the years. While this is a public water scheme managed by Irish Water, more than a third of households in County Clare source their water from group water schemes or private sources. The vast majority of these schemes need to be upgraded to modern standards. This work is supposedly to be funded by a multi-annual rural water programme. I understand that Irish Water has not accepted any calls for funding from local authorities and, therefore, much-needed upgrading works and improvements cannot progress to the detriment of people living in rural Ireland who are dependent on their local group schemes. It is imperative that when such upgrade work is complete on a group scheme, if it is the wish of the scheme members the scheme should be taken in charge by Irish Water immediately.
The second priority must be to provide safe treatment of our wastewater. County Clare is not unusual in that nearly half of the households in the county are not connected to the public water scheme. More than 17,000 are connected to their own septic tanks. First, we must take care of our public water treatment plants and invest in new plants where we are discharging untreated wastewater into our waterways and the sea. There are 35 wastewater treatment facilities in County Clare, 22 of which have available capacity. Work is progressing at present in five towns and villages throughout County Clare - Clarecastle, Liscannor, Kilkee, Kilrush and Ballyvaughan. These wastewater schemes will stop the discharge of untreated sewage coming from these villages and towns but this is only tackling a small fraction of the problem. I understand that there are nearly 50 of these small villages and settlements without sewer capability. The EPA has for a number of years been listing these and County Clare has just under 10% of those listed for the entire country.
I welcome the establishment of the new wastewater pilot scheme announced by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, during the year. Clare County Council has submitted two applications in respect of Broadford and Cooraclare. I look forward to the Minister approving those funding applications.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute the debate. It is important that we have a discussion on water services and wastewater treatment throughout the country. It is fundamental. In the few minutes available to me I will raise the issue of the wastewater treatment plants that are inadequate, and in some places non-existent, in some of the smaller villages. If they were to be prioritised and moved through the system, they could be a stepping stone to a huge amount of badly-needed housing in rural communities but also to housing that is such an issue nationally. When there is a great deal of work done at local level by the local authorities and again at national level through the Departments, officials and Ministers, to get particular schemes onto a programme, there is frustration in trying to get them through the various hoops and regulations to get boots on the ground and get the investment. While the funding is committed to it in the programme, it takes a huge effort to get the result on the ground. We welcome the initiative brought in last year through the small towns and villages scheme in close co-operation with local authorities to try to get those water schemes prioritised rather than have Irish Water. Concern and a degree of scepticism exist about the fact that the larger urban centres are being prioritised by Irish Water with a view to enabling the badly-needed houses to be built.
However, that policy, on the whole, is not a good policy. It is not a policy to get what we want, which is housing throughout the country and balanced regional development.
In the Duhallow region, we have huge investment going into the Boherbue wastewater treatment plant, which will allow that village to expand. The development proposed there includes a nursing home and further housing and a cheese plant is being envisaged there. I know there was a huge amount of work done by Councillor Bernard Moynihan and Cork County Council to get that through the planning system and all its various stages. It is great to see boots on the ground and the work going on that project.
In addition, last year, through the good offices of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, Castlemagner was included in the small towns and villages programme. I welcome the initiative and the help that he gave us on that. However, the challenge is getting this scheme from the funding being committed to it to delivering what we are trying to do, which is to ensure that extra houses can be built in the community. Castlemagner would be very well known to the Acting Chairman. It is a central enough location and there has been huge development there. It is a small village that has grown. The challenge from Cork County Council’s point of view and from Irish Water is the various different stages that have to be gone through.
Everybody has goodwill. Many projects around the country would have a certain amount of antipathy towards them or a lack of goodwill, but there is a huge amount of goodwill in respect of these projects. There is an onus on us to try to get the projects through the system.
Glantane has been crying out for a sewage treatment plan for many a long day and the lack of one has stifled development in that community. Again, it is a very centrally located community that would benefit enormously from it. The Department, Irish Water and Cork County Council should look and apprise themselves of the challenges that are there and the difficult hoops that have be gone through. Is there a way of streamlining that and getting to the end game faster?
It behoves us as public representatives to listen to the challenges. On a daily basis, we hear about our water quality and the discharge of raw or untreated sewage into rivers and streams. People have to comply with many challenges in respect of the various water quality and other environmental regulations when building housing developments, once-off houses or, indeed, perhaps a development that would not be ordinarily in the countryside. They have to go through all the hoops. It behoves us to make sure that we are putting our money where we are talking to make sure that these schemes are fully funded.
If we are to be brutally honest with ourselves, the challenge is that there are an awful lot of schemes being announced and we are overloading people to try to get to the end game. We need to look at whether the system can be streamlined. It has to be a priority where is quite clearly an issue in terms of contamination to soil or underground water from existing or inadequate wastewater treatment plants. This has to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. If something is under private ownership, such as an individual house or whatever, and there is an inspection, there is a serious onus on the individual to make sure that their septic tank or otherwise is complying with the regulations. When it is in public ownership, we must make sure that the same onus is on us to make sure we are complying with it and there is no issue.
Those are two of the schemes that I would like to see further work on. I appreciate the co-operation of the officials in the Department, Irish Water and the county council. However, sometimes the officials get frustrated as well because of the various hoops related to planning and various regulations and how they are to get through all of those. We should look at it to see whether it can be prioritised. Ultimately, that will end in what we are trying to do in solving the housing crisis, not just in urban Ireland but also throughout the country. Rural Ireland can play an enormous part in solving the crisis.
I thank the officials in Irish Water, Cork County Council and, indeed, the Department for ensuring that the Boherbue scheme got the go-ahead. However, many more villages need to have a wastewater plant.
There is another issue in terms of water quality and the supply of water. The policy has been to shut down smaller, rural schemes and have one major scheme. However, some of those schemes should be retained. Particularly this summer during the drought, there were challenges with water supply. We should not close everything down; we should keep them on standby because they may be need to booster the system as we go into drier summers. That should be looked at as well from an Irish Water point of view and an operational point of view. There are many challenges relating to water and wastewater treatment throughout the country, but we should not lose sight of the fact that it is an enabler to ensure that we have quality housing for people going into the future in both urban and rural Ireland.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the discussion. I want to address the transfer of responsibility from local authorities to Irish Water and how the unresolved nature of this issue sets a worrying precedent for other problems that may lie in wait. Specifically, it is the ability of councils to take charge of housing estates with developer-provided infrastructure, DPIs. This has been discussed at the Committee on Public Petitions and relates to the many estates that have been left in limbo since the transfer of responsibility for water services from the local authority to Irish Water. While a memorandum of understanding has been put together to include a certain cohort of estates, those with stand-alone DPIs have been left out.
According to Tipperary County Council, the local authority cannot take the estate in charge unless Irish Water agrees to assume responsibility for the DPl. This, it said, is not happening as there is no national agreement in place and there is a lack of progress on the taking-in-charge process. Until Irish Water puts in place a national strategy to address this, these estates, including the Rocksprings, Kilross, County Tipperary, will continue to make payments to the local authority, yet the council cannot maintain these estates as Irish Water will not take responsibility for the water services.
The council seems to be doing all it can to address this, but without a coherent plan and understanding between Irish Water, the Department and local authorities, these estates are abandoned. Irish Water is not living up to its commitment to put in place the national strategy it spoke of and the Department has a role to play in this regard to bang heads together and oblige Irish Water to resolve this. Is Irish Water unprepared to shoulder the responsibility? Is it waiting on more money from the Department? We need answers and we need to know who is blocking progress. I would appreciate a progress report on this from the Minister.
On the proposals in general, the lack of preparation that I spoke of seems to extend to the lack of details about holding a referendum to enshrine public ownership of the water system in the Constitution. This has potential impacts for employees in terms of the protections to be afforded to them as well as for the constituents of my home county who are failed by the utility company daily.
Irish Water refuses to come before the council to answer questions on its performance and its communications strategy. We need accountability and we need to see Irish Water take responsibility for the services it has been charged to provide. Faith in Irish Water is low, to put it mildly, and frustration with it is at an all-time high in Tipperary. Will the Minister clearly outline what input councils may have towards water services in the future?
I refer to the Acting Chair's own interaction with the Ceann Comhairle earlier in the debate. Hopefully, all Ministers responsible heard that it can be incredibly difficult to get decent communications from Irish Water. We have all said that we need to set a date for a referendum to enshrine public ownership of the water system in the Constitution. Beyond that, we want to make sure that workers’ conditions are dealt with properly and fairly. We know that some of that has to be left to the workers, employers and unions. However, anybody who has dealt with Irish Water over the past would not give the company ten out of ten for communications.
I will speak about my town of Dundalk.
Obviously, there was a CRU investigation in respect of the Cavanhill treatment plant. There were breaches relating to manganese levels in 2020. It happened again in June 2021. I am reading from a press release I put out when I dealt with Irish Water at the housing committee. Throughout the summer, we were told that by 14 September flushing processes would be in place, everything would be dealt with and the communications issues of Irish Water would have been considered. In recent years, we had issues that were initially thought to relate to iron oxide but ended up being manganese. I get that there is a higher level of manganese in the water at this time. I get that research is being done in that regard but if that is what we are going to be dealing with in the likes of Dundalk, the problem is that the manganese reacts with chlorine and we end up with brown water. We are told that the water we are getting, brown as it is, is very healthy, although I am not sure everyone necessarily believes that. The problem, however, is that we were told that everything would be done and dusted in respect of Dundalk and its outlying areas by 14 September. I saw the list of areas that were being addressed and raised with Irish Water the fact that many areas were not on the list. The other problem is that 14 September has passed. I assume some of this gets worse in summer but I am still getting videos and pictures of brown water. I can see it in my own house.
Beyond that, what we need is proper communications. We need a process to deal with it. We are going to be dealing with manganese for the next while, so, rather than flushing, we need to deal with a process and we need the Government to take action on it.
I was listening to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, when I was upstairs in my office. It was like watching "Reeling in the Years". It was all the old hits - all the old propaganda about how the Government is committed to public ownership of water. He reeled out the line that we should not worry as there cannot possibly be any privatisation of Irish Water because it is in the Water Services Act 2014. Of course, he did not mention that the legislation can just be amended without a referendum. After the next election, the Government can come in here committed to privatisation, as I believe Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in reality are still committed to it, change that legislation and do away with the requirement for a referendum. We hear all the talk about a commitment to public ownership without mentioning the reality of widespread outsourcing throughout Irish Water - all the design, build and operate contracts that, in effect, amount to privatisation from the ground level up.
Most sickening, we are here because of a request originally from Deputy Joan Collins - I was going to call her another name. For some reason Joan Burton is on my mind. I apologise sincerely.
Do not worry about it.
I do not know what to say about that.
We are here because of a request from the Deputy regarding the need for a referendum on water. We have been told that the Minister, Darragh O'Brien, looks forward to definitively addressing the referendum in the near future. That is great. We are having a debate about the future of water services now. We have had repeated commitments to hold a referendum, yet here we are having a debate about it and there is no commitment. Where is our referendum on water? We have been waiting six years. Six months ago, the Minister promised there would be a referendum this year or early next year. Where is the referendum? We are only a handful of weeks away from the next Dáil recess, when the Dáil will be off for another full month.
Why is the Government continuing to try to push through privatisation through the back door? That is already happening in terms of how Irish Water operates its outsourcing to private companies. Large parts of our water infrastructure are already being run on a for-profit basis. Officially, we are meant to be getting bills for excess usage of water next year. They were originally meant to start in 2019. As a result of the mass opposition, we have managed to delay them but it is clear the Government would like to come back to them. However, just as the threat has not gone away, the opposition of the water charges movement will not go away. That is the position of the vast majority of people in this country and the Government knows it.
The other reason we are here today is the resistance of the water workers. The water workers who are being faced with transferring to Irish Water were also given a promise that, before they transferred, there would be a referendum to ensure Irish Water could not be privatised. They have been sold out on that promise by the Government. The promise has not been kept. We have no wording and no date, so the workers are absolutely correct to fight to protect their terms and conditions and to demand a referendum on public ownership of Irish Water. It is great that a number of unions have come out to launch the Keep Water Public campaign to demand a date for a referendum to enshrine Irish Water in public ownership.
It is important that we discuss the issue of the wording. Six years ago, Deputy Joan Collins brought forward wording that was clear and would ensure there could be no future privatisation of our water services. I sat in multiple committee meetings with her at which the Government came up with this, that and the other reason to oppose it. The Government, however, has refused to come forward with its own wording thus far. When the Taoiseach has been questioned on this in the Dáil, he has been incredibly slippery, using language around the idea of keeping the resources in public ownership and so on in ways that make me think that if the Government is ultimately forced to give a date, whatever wording it comes up with will, in effect, be meaningless. It does not want to have a referendum to enshrine water in public ownership because the clear policy preference, openly declared and so on, of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is ultimately for privatisation of our water. That is what the water charges were about - commodifying our water in order for privatisation down the road.
The water workers are absolutely right to fight their fight, a crucial part of which is to demand a referendum. The public, which fought so heroically and engaged in mass non-payment, with 73% of people refusing to pay, need to keep watch on this issue now. The Government may hope the attention has gone off and that we will just forget about the referendum so it will not have to hold one. That is why public pressure is going to be brought to bear to demand a referendum, demand that we have water fully in public ownership and demand that investment is put in place to ensure we have proper water infrastructure in this country. We still do not have such infrastructure. That is not because we do not have water charges; it is because of the repeated refusal to invest in vital infrastructure. We have the same investment being made as would have been the case if water charges had been brought in.
I support the demand for a referendum to keep water in public ownership. Rank-and-file water workers across the State have been campaigning for this, and I support their campaign. I welcome the fact that the four trade unions with water worker members are now campaigning through the Keep Water Public campaign for a date to be named. A date must be named before the end of the year. If that is not done, there will be strong opposition from rank-and-file water workers to being transferred over to Irish Water, to be known as Uisce Éireann, on 1 January. I welcome the fact that Unite the Union has decided to ballot its memberships on the framework document that allows for this. I believe the three other unions should follow its example.
The wording of a referendum must be clear and strong. Water workers must remain strongly organised, even in the event of a successful referendum. We have seen with the ESB how a utility that was formerly in State hands can be de facto privatised through large-scale outsourcing. That is something the workers will need to fight. I want to know where each of the Government parties stand on the referendum issue. Press reports state that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, will bring a proposal to the Cabinet early in the new year.
I want to hear that from the Minister. The Tánaiste has been quoted as saying he does not see the need for a referendum; I would say he does not. Is this the Fine Gael position? Is there a split in the Government on this issue? The Green Party seems to have been rather quiet on it. Where does it stand on the question of a referendum to keep water in public ownership? I would like to hear from the Green Party on that.
Last but not least, for the benefit of any politician or political party that might be contemplating the idea of water charges down the road - do not even entertain the notion. What was done on the streets of this country between 2014 and 2016 can be done again. If the Government ever decides on water charges mark two, it will be met by the water charges movement mark two, which might even leave the first iteration of that in the ha'penny place.
It has to be said that any and all investment in infrastructure and services is very welcome but undoubtedly one of the most vexatious issues we are faced with in rural Ireland at present is the provision of water services. At times, Irish Water has almost a pariah status in rural Ireland. Like many of the speakers, I will localise my concerns. A common theme across many of them is the delay in connections, especially for one-off rural houses where, on average, people are lucky if they get their connection within 16 months. All rural Deputies have their own examples. There are newly-wed couples who cannot move into a house because they do not have water. There is a new Bill whereby they are required to have an air-to-water system but cannot move into their house because they will not have any heat, despite embracing everything they were meant to do in respect of environmental carbon reduction. One of the most poignant cases I have had in recent months was that of a recently widowed young woman. She and her late husband built what they thought was their dream home. She was looking forward, although it would admittedly be rather lonely, to moving into her new house and the fact that it would be something of a new start for her. Yet, more than one year on and several months after the engineer from the county council came to look at it, she is still no further in getting a water connection.
Irish Water is particularly slow on the delivery of services. The Minister of State will be well familiar with the fact, as he is based just up the road from Edgeworthstown and Ballymahon, the second and third largest towns in County Longford, that both of them are crippled with inadequate wastewater treatment systems. Irish Water has committed to me and the local authority that additional capacity will be in place for both towns by 2025. That is a wafer-thin commitment, when we got a commitment in 2021 that we would have that capacity by 2023. The reality is nobody believes these timelines from Irish Water. They are wholly inadequate.
One of the most disturbing cases we are dealing with in Longford is that of the family living immediately beside the pumping station at Lisbrack Downs. Every time the heavy rains come – needless to say the past five to six weeks have been particularly traumatic for the family – sewage spills out of the pumping station into their garden and virtually into their house. They are prisoners in their own home. Irish Water told us in February 2021 that a consultant engineering firm had been appointed to review the catchment area pumping station and rising main. An initial draft report was produced and a workshop held. Since then, we have had radio silence on the issue, while all the time this family is in a heartbreaking situation.
It is critical that there be momentum behind the provision of water and waste services. It is fair to say that the Irish public has lost faith in the capacity and ability of Irish Water to deliver a service. I appreciate that we have record investment in the development and delivery of infrastructure but this has to be backed by a sustained commitment to putting the necessary services into towns and villages that have been badly let down heretofore.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to statements on water policy. Everyone is in agreement that the importance of improving Ireland's water resources cannot be underestimated. Having clean and healthy water catchments, safe and secure water supplies and a comprehensive wastewater service are, collectively, vital to protect public health, support economic growth and, what is very important, preserve our environment.
An issue I continue to raise that causes grave concern among residents in north Mayo relates to the multi-annual rural water programme for 2022 to 2025. It is a huge issue. Some communities in north Mayo, including Carrowteige, Porturlin, Portacloy and Srahataggle and, in east Mayo, Lisduff and Cleragh, near Kiltimagh, still do not have running water. That sends a chilling message down my spine. These people are desperate to avail of a new community water connection. They are sometimes dealing with condemned wells and are prevented from using water for both drinking and domestic purposes. Their heating systems cannot reach the required temperature because they are clogged with material from bogs. This is in the 21st century. If departmental officials have not visited some of these households, it would be an education for them to see the challenges these people face on a daily basis. Last July, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, said he expected the Department to announce details of the programme priorities and invite local authorities to submit bids later this year. Four months on, we are still none the wiser as to when applications will be accepted under this programme. Last month, I was informed by Mayo County Council that it had not yet received the request for submissions for the multi-annual rural water programme 2022 to 2025 from the Department. The council expected this to happen in September but has received nothing to date.
Maybe the Minister of State could address two questions in his final remarks. When will Tobin Consulting Engineers complete volume two of its rural water sector review report and present it to the project oversight group? When will the rural water working group make recommendations to the Minister on the future governance and investment requirements for this sector? These are crucially important questions we need answered. I have got signatures from people living in Carrowteige, Porturlin, Portacloy and Srahataggle. They have successfully gathered momentum in order to remove any blockages to progress by the engineers in Mayo County Council who are currently awaiting the go-ahead to assess this proposed scheme, which will be of enormous benefit to these four north Mayo rural communities. I understand the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has not yet issued the framework for the submission process, as I referenced. I request that this be done as soon as possible. I also urge the Minister of State to prioritise this programme. It is very important in rural Ireland. Many urban Deputies are not impacted to the degree rural Deputies are as regards households having access to domestic running water. That is very important. I ask for clarity on this matter. It is crucial that the people of north Mayo get the basic necessity of running water as we enter these difficult winter months.
I commend Deputy Joan Collins on persevering with this, giving us all an opportunity to again have a whinge about Irish Water and to bring up all our localised issues, which is where this debate always seems to go. I am guilty as charged as I will probably do the same. Before I do so, I have to acknowledge that record investment is being made in upgrading infrastructure throughout the country. The total of €1.68 billion that has been committed in budget 2023 has to be acknowledged. That is an increase of approximately €110 million. Over the next three years, an additional €4.5 billion will be put into domestic water services. That is the positive news. What we are doing well is providing extra investment.
However, as I said, my main gripe with Irish Water at present is how it prioritises that funding. We all have examples throughout the country of where it is happening well and where it is not happening so well. I listened to the Acting Chair mention Killavullen and other areas of north Cork that I am familiar with, and the travails people have to go through just to get an adequate water supply. It is baffling to me, especially when I hear of the case of Arklow.
It is a case Senator Casey is completely correct in consistently raising in our parliamentary organisation. He has detailed how Arklow got a wastewater treatment plant worth €147 million. I understand why there was demand for that because raw sewage was being pumped into the sea. Obviously, that has to be curtailed and contained. When the sums are done on it, however, that was to accommodate additional population growth of 22,500 in that area. As a result of the lack of joined-up thinking with the national planning framework and so on, under that development plan the local authority is, I think, restricted to granting 50 units per annum for the coming years. It is baffling that an investment of €147 million to provide for an extra 50 houses can be prioritised over a number of other projects in my county to which I can refer. The Acting Chairman, Deputy Sherlock, will be familiar with Carrignavar. The school there has closed and there is a brownfield site in the middle of the village. The new school is under construction, but nothing can happen with the brownfield site or the other lands that are zoned for residential development until such time as the existing treatment plant is upgraded, at an estimated cost of between €1.5 million and €2 million. As to what that would return in comparison with the likes of Arklow, with that massive €147 million investment, my local authority would deliver those units in a year or two. I think the estimated time it would take to deliver 50 units per annum to make back that €147 million is 175 years. Therefore, as for Irish Water, when we acknowledge that record investment we need also to acknowledge that sometimes the prioritisation of it is questionable.
I will mention two or three other issues. Somebody mentioned group water schemes earlier. That issue affects many of us in rural areas. Very few people are talking about the additional costs of electricity and keeping those plants running. Whatever about the fact that they are functioning correctly and appropriately and the replacement of filters and so on, their running costs have far exceeded the grants those communities get. That needs to be looked at with the Minister for Finance. Perhaps some form of grant can be provided.
Deputy Flaherty mentioned the issue of connection costs and the delays in connections. Any Deputy involved with a young family, in particular one building their first home, will testify to the fact that the waiting times are delaying planning applications and holding up the whole process, not to mention the costs of connections. I know that from experience because my wife and I are looking at possibly building our first home in the next few years and I have already had people out to survey the costs of all these things. The cost of a simple water connection now is astronomical compared with what it was a few years ago.
The issue of septic tanks is also one we come across regularly, particularly in rural areas. We operate on the basis of EPA guidelines, and I get why those guidelines are in place. They are important. The topography of a site is important. The issue of percolation needs to be assessed. I find it very difficult, however, when I go onto a rural site and something historic, such as a wastewater treatment plant or a septic tank, on the site might not fall within the remit of the EPA guidelines. It is probably an historic thing that was built many years ago and does not tie in with the regulations. However, when one proposes the construction of a new biocycle unit, the EPA guidelines are stringently enforced, irrespective of the positive impact the replacement of the septic tank would have. We need to look at that if we are serious about helping people build their first one-off house.
I do not have time to mention the last issue I wished to raise but I might table it as a Topical Issue matter.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue on behalf of my constituents in Longford-Westmeath. One thing that is very clear is that the approach to water policy in this country needs a drastic realignment.
As well as the communication and engagement issues that have been spoken about, the very basics need to be got right. Today, in Westmeath, there is an 81-year-old man who lives alone in a rural area and has never had a water supply. I have dealt with a hospitality business in Longford whose supply is so bad that it purchases and transports approximately 30,000 cu. m of drinking water every three to five weeks, which is mind-boggling in 2020. A handball alley in my constituency received a bill for almost €6,000 despite being closed for the vast majority of two years over the pandemic. The resolution was absolutely soul-destroying for the volunteers running the club in question. For the third time this week, a school in Kilbeggan has been closed because of the lack of a water supply. No number of self-congratulating emails announcing the return of a supply will ease the stress of the students, parents or staff of the school.
The practices that have led to those situations need to be resolved because the public will not have faith in any water service until they are. That same public needs to be given assurances that the priorities of whatever entity ultimately ends up in charge of our water supply will be focused on improving water quality and wastewater treatment and fixing leaks and not, as the public has rightly feared over recent years, solely on profits, as happens in other jurisdictions. I shudder to think of the families who would have found themselves not only in energy poverty but also water poverty if it were not for the very successful water campaign a number of years ago. The Government parties need to set a date for the referendum on public ownership of water sooner rather than later. I fully support the trade union campaign to name a date to resolve this issue permanently.
First, I wish to raise the issue of the Drogheda wastewater treatment plant. I have seen media reports that Irish Water has said that it is executing a programme of capital works at the plant through 2021 and 2022, but we have yet to see any benefit whatsoever from those works. The ongoing issue of foul odours has been raised multiple times by residents, and the EPA has issued directives to Irish Water and the plant operators many times to deal with those issues. That residents are complaining of smells is also an indicator that the environmental or contamination controls are not adequate. We know they are not because all of us who live in Drogheda have to suffer and endure those foul odours, especially at night.
I have another concern, and that is that the municipal wastewater is a breeding ground for several bacteria, fungi and viruses. Toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and methane are also present in high levels in areas such as influent lines and settling and clarification tanks. We now know that the digesters at the wastewater plant are leaking and that a consultant's report recommended that the plant cease operation of the digesters and decommission them at the earliest available opportunity. We need urgent assurance that this is not a danger to public health and that it is being dealt with properly by Irish Water.
Is the Minister of State listening?
Yes. Why does the Deputy ask?
Second, the treatment plant is not up to capacity to reach Drogheda's projected population increase. During a tour of the Staleen water treatment plant in August 2018, I asked the representatives at the plant whether the plant would be able to deliver increased volumes of treated water to Drogheda and south Louth. I was told repeatedly by Irish Water representatives at that meeting that it would not be able to deliver the volumes of treated water required to meet Drogheda's projected growth. The growth is happening now and we are still none the wiser. We need information in order to plan for the future development of Drogheda. We need facts and figures as to how the Staleen water treatment plant will supply the planned new homes in Drogheda and south Louth under the northern environs plan, which is expected to deliver 5,000 new homes. If the numbers do not add up, both Irish Water and the Government will have to pay attention and come up with funding to increase capacity at Staleen or look at reopening the Rose Hall water treatment plant, which, I am informed, could serve between 40% and 80% of the north side of Drogheda but was decommissioned in 2017.
We do not need spin about Irish Water being confident about delivery. We need up-to-date information, facts and figures in cubic metres and, most importantly, a service that is fit for purpose.
It is great to see you back in the Chair, a Cheann Comhairle. I wish you the best of luck.
I welcome the opportunity to speak about Irish Water and water policy. At times, I have spoken repeatedly about some of the issues creating problems with regard to the work carried out under Irish Water. Irish Water has two main functions: water and wastewater.
I will address wastewater first. Other Deputies have also mentioned that a large number of private housing estates in this country are serviced by private wastewater treatment plants. The cost of funding the running costs, maintenance and the future replacement of these plants is being foisted on the residents of these estates. These residents are doing this in addition to paying their local property tax and all their other taxes. When they bought their houses, they bought them in good faith. Peculiarly, Irish Water is refusing to take these wastewater treatment plants in hand. The local authorities are refusing to have anything to do with it. They say it is Irish Water's problem. What we have is an environmental time bomb. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, spoke about water control and quality. Abbeyknockmoy in my constituency is in the Corrib catchment and is a special area of conservation, SAC. There are six estates in Corofin, all of which are built around the River Clare, which is a catchment to the Corrib. The Corrib is supplying water to a large part of Galway and Mayo. We have an opportunity to put things right before we see fish lying upside down in the water with their bellies up and wonder what has gone wrong. The EPA is hounding residents to make sure they do not pollute the rivers. That is all wrong. Funding needs to be given to Irish Water to take these treatment plants in hand. Furthermore, Abbeyknockmoy and Corofin are two principal areas where we can have growth in terms of housing but are frozen out of the planning system because any development there will be premature pending the installation of a municipal treatment plant. This is a decision for An Bord Pleanála going back to 2007 and has not changed.
Funnily enough, in 2005 during my first few years on the council, there was a list of wastewater treatment plants to be built by Galway County Council with funding from the Department. Corofin, Abbeyknockmoy, Craughwell and the municipal wastewater treatment east of Galway city were on this list. None of them are anywhere at this stage. There is a plethora of towns and villages where we could have people living but they cannot get permission to build houses because there is no wastewater treatment plant. These are the facts. We talk about a housing crisis and emergency. It is all waffle if we do not do something about it. It is important that we stop talking about it and put the necessary funding in place. We must direct Irish Water to do what needs to be done in this country.
Another good example is Athenry, where we built an extension to our wastewater treatment plant. That plant now has the capacity to take all the housing estates in the town but none of them are connected because the contract for the network to connect them is still not sorted out. There is an IDA site in Athenry, which is at the crossroads of our motorways and rail intersections between Limerick, Galway and Dublin. Guess what - the IDA site is not serviced. It has been looking at making a connection between Athenry and Galway to get into Mutton Island for a wastewater service costing €16 million. Shame on us for doing daft things like that with public money instead of getting our infrastructure right in the towns where we need to get it right.
If we are serious about traffic in Galway, we need to build a municipal treatment plant on the east of the city out where we have what we call the Ardaun corridor, which is the place selected for the future development of Galway city. It is in the east of the county but until we put in a wastewater treatment plant, we will not be able to put in the infrastructure we need. If we are serious about not having a ring road around Galway, let us build the city where we can have access to it. However, we cannot do it if we do not have the services. It is very frustrating for public representatives because what we get is a load of feasibility studies and business costs analyses and reports and if you want to slow down, you ask for clarification and basically you end up doing nothing.
If we are really serious and if we are having talks here about water, infrastructure, housing, health and all that goes with them and if we want to develop the west and south of Ireland, we need to provide the infrastructure and one of the basic commodities involves wastewater and water. Will the Minister of State please bring this back to whoever is providing the funding and direct people about how Irish Water should spend its money?
I wish the Ceann Comhairle well. I am glad to see him back. The last time I had an opportunity to speak about water was in September when we discussed the Water Services (Amendment) Bill. Some of what I said then is worthy of repeating. My speech then concerned the Bill involving the change of the name of Irish Water to Uisce Éireann and all of the associated amendments required to reflect this change across lots of different laws. Quite frankly, I do not think anybody - constituents in any town or village, particularly in County Wexford - gives a damn what the organisation is called because on numerous occasions over the past few years, people have been more worried about contracting some sort of illness as a result of drinking water provided by service providers when they have water. They want a useable service that does not require them to have a boil water notice for a few weeks every winter or where they have a ration of water once we have a few dry weather days. Wexford town and the surrounding area are under a boil water notice. Around the same time last year, we had the same thing. A statement was released on Monday updating customers. I will read part of it. It states:
Irish Water would like to remind customers served by the Wexford Town Water Supply that a Boil Water Notice remains in place. The notice, which was issued following consultation with the HSE on 2 November, is in place to protect the health of approximately 25,000 customers. It was issued due to a decline in the quality of the raw water entering the treatment plant which resulted in the detection of giardia. Continuing issues with poor water quality have increased the turbidity at the plant which can impact the disinfection process. Areas impacted by the Boil Water Notice include Wexford Town, Taghmon and surrounding areas.
The notice went on to say:
Our drinking water compliance and operational experts are working with colleagues in Wexford County Council to resolve the situation with a view to having the notice lifted as quickly as possible. As these remedial works are carried out over the coming days, some customers may experience localised interruptions or loss of pressure but these should only last a short time and normal pressure should return quickly. In the meantime, all customers of this supply are advised to continue to boil water before use until further notice. Irish Water Operations Lead, Catherine McDonough, has acknowledged the impact the Boil Water Notice is having on the community and regrets the inconvenience to customers.
"Public health is Irish Water’s number one priority, and we would like to assure customers that the notice has been put in place to protect public health. We acknowledge the inconvenience caused to homes and businesses and would like to assure customers that we will lift the notice as quickly and as safely as possible, in consultation with the HSE."
This was on a bank holiday weekend when Wexford was hosting the international opera festival. A major omission from this statement from Irish Water is the lack of any commitment to actually prevent the problem from happening again. Irish Water has assured customers that the notice has been put in place to protect them but I would imagine that a reliable service being put in place would be a far greater assurance. Similar sentiments were echoed by Wexford County Council's director of services, who was quoted in the local newspaper:
I'm told that Irish Water hope to appoint a contractor to carry out work on the Newtown Road Treatment plant by Christmas. Work will then begin early next year. I'd imagine it would be a twelve month process at least. It could even run into the following year (2024), but hopefully we can prioritise the most urgent work so that we can eliminate the need for boil water notices. Of course, I wish things would happen quicker, but there are certain processes that Irish Water has to go through.
As I said in September, the practice of mending a pump here or a pipe there is obviously necessary to restore services quickly, but it is only placing a sticking plaster over the serious issues with our water infrastructure. As the director of services, Mr. Hore, said, "there are certain processes that Irish Water has to go through", but the Government must look hard at where these processes can be simplified and carried out faster so that more progress can be made in a shorter time. Most importantly, however, it must be ensured that the system is resourced properly.
The Water Advisory Board, WAB, has not yet published its quarterly report for quarter 3 of 2022. It is worth reminding ourselves that in its last quarterly report, it highlighted several ongoing problems with Irish Water, such as the fact that 21 areas were under a boil water notice in the second quarter of this year and 20 of these areas remained under the notice for more than 30 days. It shows as well that Irish Water's five-day response rate for complaints was the lowest since reporting began in 2018. Why do we have quarterly reports if they are not quarterly or produced on time? Seriously, we must nip this in the bud now.
I will be interested to see what the reports for quarters 3 and 4 will contain to establish whether these problems are getting worse or better. If these reports are not produced on time, confidence in the system just dwindles. The recent EPA report from 14 October is very concerning. I understand that no system is perfect all the time and that problems will arise, but, unfortunately, they are happening too frequently for many of my constituents in County Wexford. In this regard, I commend the ground staff in the New Ross municipal district area and Wexford County Council in Wexford. I am pleased to say that funding has been sanctioned to provide up to 4 km of brand-new polythene piping infrastructure, alongside upgrading the capacity at reservoirs in my local area of Ballycullane and Taylorstown. It is the right thing to do. First, the completion of 1.6 km is expected by the end of February 2023. The remaining 2.5 km should then be ready to commence. In the summer of 2023, the Ring of Hook area in south-west Wexford should be a much better place in respect of its water supply and infrastructure than it was in the summer just gone.
Excuse me, I did not realise I was out of time. I look forward to there being one entity because I think there is too much passing of the buck at the moment. When we have one entity dealing with this area, then we will have accountability.
I thank the Ceann Comhairle and it is great to see him back in the Chair. I thank Deputy O'Connor for letting me go first because I have to go to another engagement. My first point concerning Irish Water and its policy is that the process of transferring workers from county councils to Irish Water is currently under way. In County Tipperary, definitely there has not been enough consultation, if any, with the workers. This will have a major impact on and represents a huge change for these workers. It will also impact their promotional prospects. They are concerned that they will be put into a straitjacket in Irish Water and not have the same variety of promotional opportunities or terms and conditions of work as they have had heretofore with the county council. I urge Irish Water to immediately get into consultation with the workers and their representatives to ensure these workers are satisfied and getting the same terms and conditions in Irish Water as they have had heretofore with the county council. I refer as well to their promotional prospects also being recognised.
I also wish to bring to light an issue raised with me today concerning a small estate in Tipperary. It commenced in the 2008-09 era and was then left unfinished for several years. Thankfully, the eight houses in this estate have now been finished. The underground works, the water and sewerage, were done prior to 2015. This means Irish Water is insisting that these works be dug up, renovated and replaced with new infrastructure. Granted, the conditions Irish Water demands from housing estates have changed since 2015, but surely it makes no sense to go back in to dig up infrastructure that was compliant when it was put in prior to 2015. It would mean this estate cannot be completed. It will be left unfinished, with houses lying idle when we all know how badly we need them.
I spoke to the county council about this issue this morning and this is not the only estate where this is happening. Developers have seen an opportunity to finish off estates left lying idle for several years and to sell on the houses, but Irish Water is putting obstacles in the way of this happening. I would, therefore, like to see this matter examined. If conditions attached to putting in infrastructure projects prior to 2015 have been met, they should be recognised as fit for purpose today.
Turning to waste treatment in my town of Thurles, the sewerage and wastewater systems are combined. This caused serious flooding three years ago. Irish Water has said that it will put the proper infrastructure in place, but it is talking about 2029 in this regard. This is not satisfactory, and other towns are in the same boat. This work must be brought forward and completed as quickly as possible in all these towns.
I welcome the Ceann Comhairle back. It is great to see him and I wish him well.
I will make a few points concerning my interpretation of the situation with our water supply. My report in this regard is not very good. Moving away from the parochial and putting a more national focus on the subject for one moment, this situation stems from continuously devolving responsibility away from democratically elected individuals to independent State agencies. Although there are many merits to doing this, when it comes to responsibility for failure it is incredibly difficult for us to get answers to questions. I heard several Deputies referring during this debate to the lack of answers, whether through parliamentary questions or in writing, from Irish Water regarding concerns in our constituencies.
My view is that Irish Water simply does not care. It depends on where outages happen and the priorities of the organisation when it comes to repairs. Looking at the water outages in Cork East, we have had several that have been exceptionally questionable. In Whitegate, for example, thousands of residents have been repeatedly put on boil water notices for long periods of time over many years. Despite years of representations having been made, Irish Water is only now coming forward with a plan to deal with this situation. People will have to wait for yet another two years. This is just not good enough. This situation has been replicated across other areas. Killavullen, a small village, for the first time ever now has a situation where decreasing water quality is starting to cause outages there and in other parts of north Cork. Concern is growing about what the priorities of Irish Water are, while there seem to be an ever-growing number of cases in my constituency of Cork East regarding areas that Irish Water has responsibility for. It is simply unacceptable.
Also concerning Irish Water, why is it not being properly brought to answer questions about the areas of the organisation's failure when it comes to providing serviced land with water supplies for new housing developments? My constituency has towns, with which the Minister of State is familiar, that could easily accommodate an extra 500 or 1,000 housing units if the wastewater infrastructure and drinking water supplies were put in place to provide serviced land, that is, if Irish Water chose to go and do this. In the midst of perhaps what is one of the greatest housing crises this State has faced since its foundation, this is not being done. It is, quite frankly, outrageous that I have to come in here to talk about this matter and that these opportunities are not being seen in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I have commented umpteen times on the Mitchelstown wastewater situation. I have lost count at this stage of how many times I have mentioned it. Irrespective of all that, I have still failed to get anyone within the organisation to come forward with a concrete plan to deal with this situation.
I want to raise other issues as well. Of course, Irish Water has responsibility for the lack of provision of sewage treatment. We are lucky to have long rafts of scenic areas along the south coast of my constituency. There are a number of locations where plans were drawn up in the 1990s - before I was born - to deal with some of the sewage issues and to give people pristine coastal waters. Cork County Council had the foresight and the vision to come up with plans to deal with these areas but there is still an unacceptable outflow of sewage into the sea. When Irish Water was created in 2013, it came along, curtailed these plans, ripped them up and never even looked at the revised version in areas around Shanagarry and Garryvoe. I want to put that on the record of this House.
If the Minister is listening back to the debate after today - I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will refer these points to him - I want to make the point that Irish Water has a lot of work to do to increase water quality in the east Cork area. They have undertaken a number of projects. I am not failing to acknowledge that. They have done considerable work in Cork Harbour. This comes back to their priorities. Are their priorities the cities or are they merely abandoning rural Ireland? If one looks at my constituency - I can give the Minister of State many examples here today - it will be clear that they have failed to deal with large rural areas across north-east Cork in my constituency. Of course, they are ignoring ongoing problems in rural areas.
It all comes back to this. We need to be careful about what the next ten years in this country will look like if we are to keep creating more independent State agencies to do the work that politicians in the past would have been hands-on within local authorities in dealing with. I am very concerned about it because the structures that are in place when it comes to accountability are just not good enough.
We are delighted to have you back, a Cheann Comhairle. You were sorely missed. Welcome back. It is great to see you looking so well.
I welcome, in budget 2023, the secured funding of €1.68 billion for the delivery of water services. While this involves a significant increase in many areas, there are many challenges. One of them that I have been on about for years is the Bagenalstown wastewater treatment plant, the upgrade of which has been listed for quite a long time in Irish Water's current capital investment plan under the project title of "Muinebheag and Leighlinbridge Wastewater Treatment Plant". The plant is also included in the wastewater treatment capacity register published on the Irish Water website. The current projected delivery date for this - I have been on to the Department and got a commitment - is early 2023. The capacity of the new plant will be 9,200 population equivalent. It will be designed to cater for projected residential growth of up to 5,265 people over the next ten years, including the existing and future population, for those currently connected to private non-Irish Water infrastructure and for industry and non-domestic growth in line with the national planning framework. My greatest concern is that no development in the area can proceed until this is upgraded. The area is already 20% over capacity, and that is a huge amount. The biggest issue brought up here today is that no sort of infrastructural work can be done - no housing or businesses can be built - unless we have this upgrade done. My concern is that we need to get these projects done as soon as possible. We cannot keep saying they will be done next year. We are crying out for houses. We are crying out for businesses to be built. We must do whatever we can to make sure we have all the steps in place for that.
I work with Irish Water. In fairness, it has an Oireachtas line and a line that local authority members can ring. However, I have had people on to me about trying to contact Irish Water who find that they are having huge issues.
The other issue I want to talk about is leaks. A number of people have contacted me to say that they have contacted Irish Water about leaks and bills. This is about businesses. One of them is a stud farm in County Carlow. Those involved have been in contact with Irish Water on several occasions about leaks. These leaks need to be sorted out. A man who came to me only two weeks ago has a business in Carlow. He said he had not got a bill from Irish Water for years. He got a bill and he said that he will have to get a mortgage to clear it. When Irish Water is working with businesses, it needs to have constant contact with them on their bills and what they have to pay. One cannot give a business a bill after years, particularly that amount of a bill. I had a convent on to me. It has charitable status. They have been receiving bills from Irish Water. I might as well tell the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, that I am blue in the face contacting them. I think we nearly have it sorted out. Everybody has enough strain at the moment without putting all these pressures on businesses, and particularly those with charitable status that are getting bills that they should not have to pay. I ask the Minister of State to ensure we work on this with Irish Water.
I welcome the investment in Irish Water. It will play a huge part in the future progress of Ireland, our businesses and our housing. We need to make sure we work together with it and we deliver. Communication is key here.
Deputies Paul Donnelly and Ó Laoghaire are due to share time.
I will make a start, a Cheann Comhairle.
Ar aghaidh leat.
Leanfaidh mé ar aghaidh agus má thagann an Teachta Paul Donnelly, ligfidh mé isteach dó. It is good to see you back, a Cheann Comhairle back. Fáilte romhat ar ais. Tá sé go maith tú a fheiceáil i mbarr do shláinte agus do bheatha arís.
On Irish Water, I might surprise the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, by starting out with a positive of sorts. In fairness to Irish Water, there has been a long-standing problem in Cork Harbour with the discharge of foul waste, pollution and the impact on bathing waters, It has to be acknowledged that there has been very significant investment in that important project. Not every part of the schedule has run perfectly but, by and large, it is going well. It will play a vitally important role in the future for the environment, for the quality of people's drinking water, for the quality of water in the harbour and for the potential for future development. I want to acknowledge that before having some maybe adverse things to say about Irish Water. It certainly is not all bad.
It is my view that it is possible to have a national utility that is responsive and properly resourced. I was never of the view that water charges were necessary to ensure investment in water services. That can be seen in terms of the investment that has taken place in the North over the course of the past ten years where water charges were taken off the table. Similarly, at least where it comes to Cork city, investment is possible without that model. I suppose I would insist that it should remain the case that it is possible, provided the right political priorities are there, to ensure there is investment in our water services that comes through direct public taxation.
The other element of that, of course, is that we need to ensure this remains in public ownership. I was at a protest recently in Cork city centre organised by water services workers who work in Cork City Council and Cork County Council. One of their key demands was a date for the referendum on the public ownership of Irish Water. That is absolutely essential.
In terms of Irish Water, as I say, there is a lot of work going on. That sometimes causes expected outages, but in the course of things, naturally, through storms and whatever, there are unexpected outages too. I can understand when people are not notified of an outage that cannot be expected but I must say I have been disappointed and frustrated on a number of occasions about the notice that has been received by residents in my constituency due to scheduled outages. Unexpected weather, storms or whatever occur - these things happen, and that is fair enough. I understand that but where there is scheduled work, it is vitally important to provide advance notice. People in all sorts of public authorities point to the note in the newspaper as if people still leaf through the back pages of the local newspaper looking for these advertisements. That is not how people will hear about outages. They need to hear it through the radio. When there are small numbers of houses affected - perhaps a couple of hundred - there is no reason Irish Water could not distribute literature directly to those houses. It happens on occasion with bodies such as the Office of Public Works, OPW. Where there is something to do with flood relief, the OPW ensures that the contractor delivers a notice door to door. It should be the same with Irish Water. When one is talking about more than 1,000 houses affected, perhaps that is not so realistic.
Is it possible for a couple of hundred houses? I believe it is and it is reasonable. Many elderly and vulnerable people are hugely affected if their water supply is disrupted when they have had no notice of it. A notice may have been in a newspaper but that is not to say that the key people will see it. This brings me to another issue that has been flagged by several of my colleagues on Cork City Council. There has been some progress on it. This is the issue of notice for vulnerable people. This relates to people who are hard of hearing or hard of sight. It is about ensuring these people are contacted directly to make sure they are aware of it.
Irish Water is on the ground regularly and it is doing a lot of work. This affects the public realm fairly significantly. Sometimes it is restored properly and quickly in co-operation with the local authority or by its own labour. Unfortunately, it is not always the case. Sometimes a road is dug up and a resident or two or a whole street are affected. They can be a long time trying to chase Irish Water to remediate it. A woman in my constituency had been trying to get Irish Water to fix the area in front of her drive for 11 months. This is not good enough. She had no choice about the works. They were for the public good. That is all fine but her drive and any street that has been affected needs to be made good quickly and promptly. There must be courtesy and respect for residents.
The small towns and villages growth programme Irish Water plans to develop is in a chaotic state in Tipperary. More than seven villages in the county are on the list waiting for investment, including my village of Newcastle, Golden and Cloughjordan at the very north of the county. The lack of progress on wastewater treatment plants is holding up development. It is also causing huge pollution. The EPA and everybody else is ignoring it. There are regular boil water notices on the Galtee regional water scheme, as there are in Ahenny and the Carrick-on-Suir area. There were also issues in the areas of Dualla and Ballinure during the summer. The town of Clonmel, the vale of honey, is a massive town of 25,000 people with a hinterland. There are boil water notices every second week. A former council official, Jimmy Harney, did a lot of work and progressed to a certain extent a treatment plant to extract water from the river. A landlord is willing to sell a site but it has stalled. Businesses and households are putting up with dirty water, no water and boil water notices. It is a shocking situation.
We also have the privatisation of Irish Water. It was the biggest fiasco of all time. There is also the way the workers are treated. I have mentioned a number of projects and I salute the plumbers, caretakers and all the staff. I pay tribute to the late PJ Cullinan who died recently. He was a wonderful caretaker. The workers are being forced over to Irish Water. They joined the county council and have given sterling service. They want to continue to do so. Today I have heard the parties of the left say the unions are now waking up and finally letting on to be representing their members. I do not think they are. They are in this deal. I hear Government backbenchers speak all the time about utilities companies being set up. We are taking the power away from the local elected officials.
Irish Water has had quite a lot of issues. Deputy McGrath mentioned Cork County Council workers and employees who are having their rights completely changed. Perhaps they have worked their whole lives for Cork County Council, having initially agreed their terms and conditions, and now they are changing. It is a huge issue for a lot of people. It is raised with me quite often in west Cork. People need to step back and look at the rights of the employees.
We also have a massive crisis in Clonakilty in west Cork where there is little or no water. Many people are blaming climate change but it is not climate change. It is common sense. Clonakilty has developed. It has been a great developing town for the past 20 years or more. It is now at a complete standstill. There will be no further development until the water issue is resolved in Clonakilty. Imagine this. The Government is lying idly by while the scheme develops at a snail's pace. Anyone saying it is climate change is blinding us. It is actually development and there is employment. This is good and this is positive news. There is great demand for housing in Clonakilty. Areas of Clonakilty such as Clogheen, Lady's Cross, the bypass road, The Miles, Tawnies Lower, Barrack Hill and Scartagh are badly affected and have been terribly affected in recent months. Roscarbery is on the Clonakilty scheme, as are other areas including Caherbeg and Reanascreena South. I cannot understand it. We had a problem in Schull. We had holding tanks. We put in tanks for holding water when there was a crisis. What is the progress on the Clonakilty water scheme? We need to know it right here right now for the greater development of the Clonakilty area.
I have to indicate that I have had an involvement in water services and my family still do. I can honestly say I worked on repairing water leaks and water breaks in the middle of the night, Christmas Day and St. Patrick's Day. I appreciate those men. When the water goes out, they do everything to ensure it flows through the taps again.
The Deputy knows what he is talking about.
I certainly do. I know what is involved for people such as Freddie Bartlett and all the people who work through the day and night. They know where every connection is, where every scour valve is and where everything is. They know the reservoirs. They know how to get them flowing and operating. We really have to appreciate these men. They are worried about their future because of what is happening and being forced to cross over to Irish Water. They started with Kerry County Council and they should finish out their time there. Any of those who started with the council should be let finish their time in the council. I know they work for Irish Water now but it is different to move the employment across. I do not think it is fair on them. We have to recognise the great work they do, as I said, at unearthly hours. I remember we were eaten alive by the midges one particular night at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. People have no idea. You go under the bucket of the machine to get away from them. They are only small things but they are troublesome.
They get into your hair.
If you had hair.
I have as much as you anyway on my head. It would be a miser who would argue between the difference of how much hair either of us have.
The chief executive officer of Irish Water, Mr. Niall Gleeson, has said that since 2014 Irish Water has built new wastewater infrastructure for 16 towns and villages throughout the country, ending the discharge of raw sewage into rivers, lakes and seas. Where is Limerick? Oola has been waiting for an upgrade for 20 years; Hospital has been waiting for an upgrade for 20 years; Dromcolliher has been waiting 20 years; and there are also Glin, Foynes and Shanagolden. People were in Foynes during the week looking at what projects would be done there. There is raw sewage going into the River Shannon. The Government has never invested in infrastructure. We cannot build a house without infrastructure. Does the Government not get it? This and previous Governments have never invested in infrastructure. This is why we have a housing problem. Houses cannot be built because there is no infrastructure. Raw sewage is going into the rivers and seas all around Ireland. This is a problem. It is estimated that €11 billion will be the funding requirement for 2024, made up of €6.1 billion investment in infrastructure and a €4.9 billion investment in operating costs. Now the Government wants those people who know the bad water system we have at present and who work for the council to swap over to Irish Water. Even though the system is broken, everybody in the council knows how to fix it and the Government wants them to swap over to Irish Water. They should be left to finish out their term with the councils where they started. Stop using bully tactics to make them swap over.
I welcome the Ceann Comhairle back. It is great to have him in charge of the House again. He was very much missed when he was away for a little time. We appreciate him. With regard to this issue, it is very important to acknowledge the great work done by the water section of Kerry County Council and the service it has given over the years.
We have serious problems in Kenmare where we cannot have any development, and in many other villages, because of a lack of sewerage and water facilities in the town. We need development in such places and there are many small villages throughout the county that are in serious trouble. We have asked that the investment required for these places be fast-tracked so we can have development and allow for growth.
As to what is happening with the whole system of transition, we want to think of the great people who have dedicated their lives to serving our county of Kerry, through their work in Kerry County Council and subsequently with Irish Water, and the great service they have given. I too want to think about people such as Freddie Bartlett; Frank Sheehan, who has retired; Mattie O'Shea, from Glenbeigh, who is also retired; Maurice Fitzgerald; Rory O'Sullivan; Denis Reen; Jeremiah Murphy; and people who are gone from us. There were great people in our county, such as the great Joe Murphy from Dromtine who worked with Jackie Healy-Rae in providing water to Sneem many years ago and getting water flowing, and people like the late Jack Lyon, as well as our uncle Dan Rae, who used to be outside day and night with a digger doing water repairs and fixing breaks in pipes. These are the people who go out on Christmas Day or in the middle of the night. They work continuously and when they are finished one break, another would appear somewhere else and they would have to keep going. These are the people we have to appreciate. They are more important than any man wearing a suit, you can be sure of that. These are the people who do the work on the ground and I respect that. We have to treat them with respect when decisions are being made in the Houses of the Oireachtas.
Like Deputy Healy-Rae, I am glad to see the Ceann Comhairle back in the Chair. I hope he missed us as much as we missed him.
He did not.
I am worried that in his absence, he may have forgotten some of the geography of Ireland, so I am glad he has had a good reminder of every town and village in this debate.
I am after getting the litany of the waterworks caretakers. Will we have the litany of the villages now?
I fully intend to bring the Ceann Comhairle on a tour of Waterford shortly, but I will begin with an obtuse metaphor because I know he also enjoys them. When thinking of water infrastructure, I strangely think about the difference between losing one's front teeth and dealing with one's blood pressure. If you lose one of your front teeth, you will attend the dentist the next day to get it fixed. However, if you are like the average Irish male and find out you have high blood pressure, you will probably wait for about five years before you do anything about it. The irony of it is that it is the blood pressure that will kill you. It is similarly the case in the investment in infrastructure, including water and energy infrastructure and the grid. Our road network is like the front tooth; if there is a pothole outside a person's home, he or she will notice it and do something about it straightaway. However, addressing water infrastructure is like addressing blood pressure. Historically, we have a habit of underinvesting in it. It is coming back to haunt us and it affects all the development we want to do.
I refer to the EPA report on water quality in Ireland. It starkly shows us the problem we have, not just in urban wastewater treatment but across rural settings. A series entitled "Cois Móire" will start on TG4 tonight that will follow the course of the River Blackwater from where it rises in north Kerry, through north Cork and into Waterford, an area spanning some of the best farming country in Ireland. It is a river that used to be very famous for its fisheries, but that is no longer the case. The stocks of fish in such rivers are declining steeply and this is to do with our water quality. I looked at the EU nature restoration law that is coming down the tracks and the commitments we will have to live up to in protecting our estuarine areas, for example, and I am not sure we can continue to do that with the current level of pollution, particularly in respect of nitrogen and phosphorus.
I am disappointed the Ceann Comhairle will miss my tour of Waterford. I wanted to list the likes of Dungarvan town, which is under pressure, and Ardmore, which is getting new water treatment works that were much needed. I will focus on the village of Bunmahon, an area about which I spoke last December. An example of this can be seen all over the country. The EPA, Waterford County Council and everybody involved have acknowledged that there is a need for a wastewater treatment plant in Bunmahon. The community has been fighting tooth and nail for a wastewater treatment plant. It is a coastal village that relies on tourism. Water quality is of the utmost importance. The community wants to build more houses for local people to live in but this is being held back by our investment in wastewater infrastructure. It is good that we are taking this tour of the country because water quality is an issue that affects communities across the country. It is good that we have the chance to list them.
We have to look to Europe and what is coming down the tracks in the urban wastewater treatment directive, about which we heard news on 26 October. It focuses on making wastewater energy neutral and making industry responsible for treating toxic micropollutants. These provisions require us to move in the same direction. We know we have built our development on a creaking water infrastructure, in which it is essential that we invest.
I thank the Minister of State for being here to listen to our ambitions for the development of wastewater infrastructure throughout the country and water infrastructure in general. We need to be ambitious in how we seek to empower our towns and villages to grow and develop and become attractive places within which to live and work.
We are still dealing with a legacy of a crash that left many homeowners in towns and villages high and dry almost a decade ago. I am sure the Minister of State and many others have been dealing with that legacy and trying to support homeowners who are in estates that are serviced by private wastewater treatment facilities. It is the policy of Galway County Council, and that of many other local authorities, not to take these private wastewater treatment facilities in charge, many of which are now malfunctioning a decade later. Homeowners in these estates, some of which are quite large in towns and villages across County Galway, are left carrying the can. We need to look at mechanisms, some of which were introduced five to six years ago, as to how these issues could be addressed. They are not working. Many homeowners across Ireland are left carrying the can of this legacy at a huge cost. Some of the treatment facilities are simply not working and the Minister of State knows the outcome of that, which I do not have to explain to him. We need to concentrate on supporting homeowners to address these legacy issues in whatever way we can. Irish Water has a significant role to play in that regard, as do our local authorities.
Another issue, which is welcome in one sense, is the demographic challenge of a growing population. Our population has reached 5 million and is predicted to reach many more millions in the decades to come. Our national planning policy is beginning to dictate, from which there are many positives arising, that the majority of our new housing developments should be built in our towns and villages within our settlement centres. The majority of these settlement centres are not set up to accommodate that kind of development. Craughwell is one village in my locality. Its population has doubled in the past decade and the same is expected to happen in the next decade. It is an incredibly attractive place to live and has many fine sports and educational facilities. It is a village close to Galway city. Again, it does not have a wastewater facility. When I inquired with Irish Water several months ago as to what its plans were for the development of a wastewater facility in Craughwell, a burgeoning town, I was told it neither had the remit nor the funds to do so. Craughwell is a perfect example of what needs to be done in the future. Irish Water needs to become far more proactive in providing wastewater treatment facilities to facilitate our towns and villages in the future.
As legislators we have the opportunity to ensure our policies and laws are fit for purpose. If this debate is anything to go by, we have a lot of work to do to protect our water. The most recent EPA report on water quality was published last month and it is not good news. Only about half of our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters are in a satisfactory condition and the overall ecological health of our waters has declined in recent years. The analysis finds the main pressures on water quality agriculture, physical changes such as land drainage and dredging, forestry activities and discharges from urban wastewater. The only good news is that although the number of water bodies impacted by urban wastewater remains high, it is reducing and the trend is going in the right direction.
The number of water bodies impacted by agriculture has, however, increased in recent years and the train is going firmly in the wrong direction. While we have regulations to control water pollution from agriculture, they need to be implemented. I have concerns that these are not being enforced. I fear our water quality will continue to decline in the areas where we have intensive farming with high levels of nitrogen input.
Many of the physical alterations to our watercourses are perpetuated by legislation that dates back to the 1940s. The Arterial Drainage Act 1945 requires the Office of Public Works to maintain water catchments covering about 20% of our country. This amounts to drainage, dredging, bank clearance and the clearing of silt and vegetation in more than 11,000 sq km of rivers and streams with no regard for anything natural living nearby. The effect is to get water to flow more quickly out of the countryside. Ultimately, we are draining our land and rendering it incapable of holding water in times of flood and guaranteeing that the land continues to act as a carbon source rather than a much-needed carbon store. The Arterial Drainage Act should be reviewed. It has been discussed by the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, which I chair, a number of times and we will publish an important report next week that will address this and other issues.
I must mention the project due to bring 350 million litres of water a day from the River Shannon catchment to Dublin. The project highlights the many failures in how water is managed in this country and we need to drop it and start to think about clever solutions for where the urban growth for Dublin should go. We can and should look at concentrating growth in our urban centres and places such as Limerick, Galway, Cork and Waterford where pressures are not as acute.
I want to offer some praise. People are making complaints about their constituencies, which is only right. There are areas of my constituency where there are issues with Irish Water. I came into the Dáil in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and made those complaints on behalf of my constituents, in particular those served by the Staleen water supply, which goes all the way from Staleen on the River Boyne to Ashbourne, Kilbride and Ratoath. I was pleased that earlier this year major upgrades were done in Ashbourne to ensure the resilience of the water supply, thanks to a lot of people working together.
Only this week, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and I, along with other public representatives, turned the sod with Irish Water on a new reservoir that will serve Ratoath. At the moment Ratoath has about three hours' water supply if anything goes wrong on the main pipeline. With this work, it will have 24 hours' water supply, plus a better pipe network to prevent those problems arising in the first place. This is welcome. I am glad that I came into the Dáil and made similar points to those colleagues have made today, but we are seeing results in government and I confident that will continue across the country under this Government, working with Irish Water, to improve the water supply for all of our constituents.
I want to praise the staff of Irish Water, in particular those working in water services at local authority level. They are the people we see out at all hours of the night in wind and rain addressing local issues. I wish to discuss two areas. The first is Bailieborough, the town I live in, and the second is Virginia, County Cavan. Sadly, over recent months there have been a lot of water outages, which happened because the wastewater plant has gone way beyond the capacity it was designed to deliver. It needs a serious upgrade.
Cavan County Council and private developers are working with might and main to deliver social housing. East Cavan is closest to the city of Dublin and the N3, which is currently at design stage for a bypass of Virginia. All our housing projects are being hampered because we do not have the wastewater treatment plants we need for Bailieborough and Virginia. One particular development Cavan County Council wants to commence comprises 45 houses. It has decided a separate independent wastewater plant will have to be developed and then decommissioned after the housing estate is built. At least 200 houses cannot be built in the two towns because we do not have the required wastewater capacity. Anything that can be done to accelerate the two projects will go a huge way towards giving us the housing supply we need in east Cavan.
I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate. Nine years after Irish Water was incorporated, this Bill is finding its way to the Dáil. It will provide the first bit of accountability in respect of Irish Water. It will become accountable to the Committee on Public Accounts and audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
In terms of background to this discussion, the report on urban wastewater treatment was published by the EPA on 20 October. It tells us that 7.5 million litres of sewage is flowing into Ireland's seas and rivers every day, enough to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools. I am not here to give out about Irish Water. It was made into a boxing bag by various Governments. We should have resourced local authorities and built on their knowledge and skill. The Government did the opposite. It was only because of the outrage on the ground that Irish Water has remained in the manner in which it is now, namely a semi public-private company. We need a referendum quickly.
To get back to the context of the discussion, the EPA has told us 32 towns and villages are still discharging raw sewage into the environment every day, including Carraroe, to which I will come back if I have time. Irish Water is finally reviewing its policy. Just 51% of the waste from Ireland's large urban areas was treated to the EU standard. Another EPA report published on 13 October on water quality in Ireland found it is not as good as it should be, to put up mildly. Only about half of our surface waters are meeting the standard and we have gone backwards, related to the upswing in agricultural intensification.
An EU deadline was set in 2005. We were in court in 2019 and eight large urban areas were in trouble. Dr. Tom Ryan of the EPA said at the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage on 4 October that we are potentially looking at cases being taken against us. It is a major challenge.
I will fault Irish Water on one count. It is not transferable. We had no water in Cois Fharraige until very recently. There is still no drinking water on Inishbofin. There was no drinking water on Inisheer. Deputies and local councillors were left like amadáns emailing Irish Water trying to find out what caused the problem, when it happened and when it would be rectified. There was a high level of manganese in the water. Notices told people not to boil their water. A few weeks later they were told not to drink the water. We are still dealing with that tobacco. Talk about muddying the waters. I could go on, but I will stop for my colleague.
I worked in water services as a caretaker for Donegal County Council in the real world before I came in here. I know exactly what the Rural Independents were saying when they spoke about the work and commitment of water workers to ensure that water supplies continue across rural Ireland.
One would be forgiven for reading the Minister of State's speech and thinking there were no water services before Irish Water came about. That was not the case. There were large water services that were kept going by people in local communities who ensured water services were delivered. That is what will be lost through Irish Water. It is in the process of being lost because jobs will transfer to Irish Water. We do not know what will happen or whether there will be ongoing commitments to local staff.
They will be lost and it will be to the detriment of water services throughout this country if that situation is allowed to happen. However, that is the way it will work and it will happen from now on.
This debate was supposed to be around the need for a referendum around water services. I think it has been mentioned in one sentence of the Minister of State's speech, which is a seven- or eight-page document. A referendum will be vitally important because it will ensure our water services stay in public ownership because, ultimately, what will happen is water services will move out of public ownership. The onus is on the Department to make sure that happens.
This is a Bill basically about Bord Gáis, or Ervia as it is now known, separating from Irish Water. That is badly needed because Irish Water is an overcooked organisation given the way it has done things. Proper budgets are needed for Irish Water. Previous speakers outlined where there are problems throughout the country. These will not be magically solved overnight. The problem is that over the years not enough money was given to resolve the issues in these towns, especially in the west. They need to be treated the same as everywhere else.
The House is in agreement that many people are very unhappy about what is going on with the workers in the councils. The Minister needs to give a clear indication that a referendum takes place. That is ferociously important. The Government should say that straight away because many of the workers are very sceptical about what is going on.
I support what Deputy Joan Collins proposed in her Bill. The Minister of State should not forget the group water schemes. However, what we have to deal with in this Bill is Bord Gáis separating from Irish Water.
A number of local authority water service workers were in the Gallery this afternoon, one of whom, Anthony, is still here. A couple of them had to leave to work the late shift. These are the workers with serious concerns about their jobs, working conditions, pay and future pension entitlements. It would be good if they could at least get some straight answers from the Minister and Government to the questions they have. A key question relates to the issue of a referendum to enshrine public ownership of water and sanitation services in the Constitution. They were promised such a referendum would be passed before any transfer of workers to Irish Water would take place. Such a transfer was supposed to take place in 2026. In the framework agreement agreed by the four unions involved and the Government at the Workplace Relations Commission, there is no mention of a referendum and a date for transfer has been brought forward by three years to January 2023, which is only a few weeks away.
On 8 November 2016, six years ago yesterday, I moved the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) (No. 2) Bill 2016. It set out the wording for a referendum and was agreed, supported and signed by right-to-water parties, the Right2Water campaign, the unions and the thousands of people on the streets. That wording did not just deal with ownership but also public management of water sanitation services inserted into Article 28.4.2.1° of the Constitution, which deals with the responsibilities of the State. We do not want to place this text in the rights-based section of the Constitution where a human right to water may be in conflict with the ownership of our water system by some Irish oligarch or international vulture fund and some Supreme Court judge may decide whose right is sacrosanct. We need the amendment placed in the governance section of the Constitution.
The Bill was unopposed in 2016. Fianna Fáil supported it. It had the unanimous support of the Dáil on First Stage but has now been buried for six years on Committee Stage by the committee. In those six years, we have had three Ministers, two of whom were Fine Gael and one of whom was Fianna Fáil, and the current Minister. The committee is controlled by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I have written six times since 2020 for the legislation to be brought before the committee and I have been told every time that there is no time. Maybe another six years will be needed before anything happens.
It would be good if the Minister gave an unequivocal statement of his intentions. There is no mention of a referendum in the proposed legislation on waste services. Will he give a date for the referendum as opposed to a vague commitment? Will he give an indication of the proposed wording and where it is to be inserted in the Constitution? This is important to ensure water does not remain in public ownership in name only, with the majority of services outsourced to private companies.
I welcome that four trade unions have launched a campaign for a referendum date. It would also be useful if Fine Gael clarified its position. Both the Tánaiste and the Senator Barry Ward of Fine Gael have stated in recent interviews that they do not think such a referendum is necessary. The dishonesty of not opposing my Bill in open debate and killing it on Committee Stage speaks volumes. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and, indeed, the Green Party cannot be trusted on this issue.
I received a letter from the Minister today in which he stated he was happy to confirm he would bring forward definitive proposals on a referendum on water ownership for consideration by Government early in the new year. That is too late. January 2023 is when these workers are expected to transfer into Irish Water. It is not on. We need the date beforehand and we need wording. The position is too vague. The workers are calling for a referendum. They are calling for wording that states water and water services are to remain in public ownership. Terms and conditions of local authority water workers do not include allowances and regular and restored overtime. Allowances, rostered overtime and an on-call allowance must be red circled in the water framework document.
A worker's pensionable allowance of two and a half hours per week is €87.55, drainage allowance per week is €53 and on-call allowance is €86. The worker's total loss per year is €11,782 and the total loss when the worker retires will be €188,522.88 before tax. A worker has made the point with regard to rostered overtime allowance that no other grades are impacted. It will take him 16 years to accumulate these earnings while some politicians and staff of Uisce Éireann earn this amount in one year. These pensionable overtime allowances have to be red circled for these unions.
The Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, is wishy-washy on this matter. In a recent letter, it stated that, with a view to ensuring that further detail and comfort is provided with regard to how individual circumstances can be addressed at local level, noting that the range of local variations and individual commitments across various local authorities brings a level of complexity that cannot be addressed centrally. This has to be red circled for those workers.
I thank Members for sharing their views during the course of this wide-ranging debate, which I have found to be helpful and informative. In the short time remaining, I will sum up by responding to some of the concerns which were most commonly raised by Deputies in the debate. Deputies will of course have other opportunities to raise any issues of individual concern or priority with the Minister directly, by way of correspondence or otherwise.
As mentioned by my Government colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, earlier, the Government’s water policy programme centres around three key essentials areas of action. These are the full integration of water services under Irish Water as the single national water services utility; sustained high levels of multi-annual investment; and strong protection of water bodies. The Government is progressing strongly on each of these fronts.
Many significant milestones have already been achieved and have paved the way for the delivery of the further necessary transformations in our water sector. These milestones include the framework for the future delivery of water services, which has been identified with unions at the WRC and will enable the full integration of water services under Irish Water by 2026; the Water Services (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2022, which is now at an advanced stage in the legislative process and will see Irish Water legally established as the stand-alone national water services authority in public ownership by 1 January 2023; the sustained investment in Irish Water infrastructure which is currently being maintained at record levels, year on year, to meet citizens' needs for water services and to facilitate housing and development in urban and rural locations; and, just as importantly, the strengthening of the rural water programme with regard to governance, oversight and financial investment to ensure equality of outcomes for the rural water sector.
The last point about the milestones is that, to underpin all Government activity in the water domain, Ireland’s third river basin management plan is being finalised to cover the planning period to 2027 in order to deliver on our obligations to reverse the decline in water body status and restore water quality, while working towards climate change and biodiversity objectives.
On the referendum, I appreciate the desire of Members to see a firm commitment on wording and timing. The Minister has been clear on the approach here. The wording being considered is focused on ensuring that the entity tasked with operating the public water system, Irish Water, must always remain in State ownership. As for the timing, it is intended the Government will consider a referendum proposal on water ownership in conjunction with the anticipated recommendation of a proposed referendum on housing from the commission on housing. The Minister looks forward to bringing proposals on both referendums to Government for consideration in the near future.
The status of Irish Water as a statutory body is provided for in the Water Services (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2022. The Bill provides that it will be known as Uisce Éireann and describes it as the national authority for water services with responsibility for the functions assigned to it by, or under, the Water Services Acts 2007 to 2022. The Bill provides for a change in the existing share ownership arrangements such that the shares are to be held by both the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This is similar to the approach for other State-owned bodies. Commensurate with the level of Exchequer funding it receives, Irish Water-Uisce Éireann will be subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General and be accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts.
There is no question of the framework for the future delivery of water services being implemented without due consultation with staff. It is important to note that from a staff perspective, the framework sets out the options that will become available generally to all staff members in due course. It empowers each staff member to decide voluntarily on the option best suited to his or her individual needs. The framework already provides for a comprehensive engagement exercise to be carried out with local authority water services staff to communicate the framework details directly to staff. This will ensure all water services staff will fully understand the options available to them under the framework. Any transfers of staff to become permanent employees of Irish Water will be on a voluntary basis.
Demonstrable progress is being made in addressing the challenges we face and the Government will continue to deliver strongly on the ambitious commitments to water services contained in the programme for Government.
A few issues were raised by Deputies during the debate. Several expressed concerns about communications with Irish Water. We will revert to Irish Water and the Minister in connection with that. I appreciate that given the uncertainty experienced by communities, it is critical public information is delivered to Members of the Oireachtas, and all our public representatives, so we can communicate with communities. Deputy Dillon had a query about the rural water sector and the review. Tobin Consulting Engineers was engaged to undertake a research and information project to inform the working group on its review of the rural water sector. The report for this project is substantially completed and it is expected the working group will consider the final report shortly. Once the working group has considered the report, a policy paper will be developed by the Department and a submission will then be made to the Minister for his consideration in early 2023.
On the number of discharge points, it is important I put firmly on record the areas of improvement. Irish Water has addressed some 18 areas since 2014, which is significant progress. Of the remaining 32 areas of discharge, construction work has begun on half these sites. Again, that shows the result of the significant Government investment in Irish Water. Work is expected to commence on the remaining areas by 2024. I acknowledge the many Deputies who pointed out the significant improvements to the water infrastructure in their locality. We must be clear we had decades of underinvestment in our water and wastewater infrastructure. It is Irish Water's job to rectify this and it is doing just that with a significant programme of work. This money obviously has to be raised by the Exchequer. We are all aware, when we point out the different problems in our society and communities, that money must be raised to resolve those issues. That is why the Government has taken the significant decision to ensure Irish Water has over €1.5 billion at its disposal this year and will continue to improve our water infrastructure and also unlock so many developments. As I travel around the network of 31 local authorities, I see many developments that need to be unlocked in terms of having services to underwrite their capacity to develop into the future. We work closely with the management of Irish Water to continue that programme of work and ensure we are transforming Ireland to ensure it is sustainable and our water services are up to scratch and meet the needs or our communities.