I am representing two entities, the Earth Institute, UCD, which has been established with programme for research in third-level institutions, PRTLI 5, for which we are very grateful and a new entity being established by Atlantic Philanthropies, the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre. In both those entities, we are determined to give as much support and evidence to the Legislature and Members as is possible about the policy choices in environmental areas. I am making this formal offer to the committee and its members.
The proposed national water management agency, Irish Water, should be given lead responsibility for implementing the river basin approach. Currently, there are a bunch of river basin plans and no action. There is a legislative obligation to implement such an approach but it is also the right way to manage water.
Group water schemes and their managers should be given legislative status, recognition and lead roles in their areas of responsibility under this new agency umbrella. The record of these groups is fantastic in how they manage their affairs, their cost-effectiveness, the evidence they bring to bear and, most importantly, how they get community support. It would be a tragedy if, under the new arrangements, they were washed out of the system.
We strongly support metering. In our submission paper, we have put much time and effort into giving evidence from other jurisdictions of their metering regimes, rates and tariffs. It gives much more substantive and analytical evidence than what I have seen to date in the committee's examination of the issue.
In parallel to this, the legislation establishing the agency needs to address the fairness issue directly. In my submission, I have provided some evidence of this in practice. The fairness of polluter pays is compelling to introduce metering. However, for the poorest people it would be a larger share of their disposable income than it would be for rich people.
One issue that has not yet been touched on in the committee's deliberations is the introduction of a system of charges to users of water treatment plants, based on the toxicity of their emissions. My submission cites evidence that shows such an approach would mean far less capital would have to be spent on waste treatment plants with a dramatic improvement in treatment capacity.
Another important and key issue which has not been addressed in the committee's deliberations is the management of our precious water resource as an economic asset. For this, I cited the Food Harvest 2020 policy which calls for a 50% increase in milk output by 2020. However, that document and its aspirations are effectively a dead man walking unless we get simultaneously very smart management of our water systems. Under business as usual, it will run straight into the wall of constraints in terms of water quality, the water framework directive regulations and so on. It will be an unholy mess. The recommendation is that the EPA, Teagasc, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Office of Public Works put their heads together with an integrated economic environment strategy or that ambition, which I very much support, is dead.
The eighth point, and this has not been overtly addressed, is that Irish Water should support innovation and enterprise. When investing a great deal of money and charging people, all kinds of business opportunities arise out of that, both in terms of management systems, technologies and so on. The group water schemes, even the smallest schemes, have been very smart at getting local business people involved in trying to solve problems and so on. Irish Water should have a specific mandate to have an innovation group, essentially to generate enterprise out of the water activity. Of course, that is related directly to the metering issue. There is no business if there is no charging scheme. Those two go together.
The ninth point is the need to pay a great attention to the regulatory framework. Regulatatory failure, as members know, is a big part of the catastrophe that we are now experiencing in terms of our economic performance. The design of the mandate that the regulator gets, the regulatory performance metrics and so on are critical and need to be enshrined in legislation, and not just left as an open question. If one leaves it open, the implications could be catastrophic. If the regulator is not properly resourced or does not do the job properly and has not been given a very clear, unambiguous mandate, we will end up with a big mess. We need to know how much it costs per cubic metre. I have worked through why that information is needed, how to proceed in terms of operating capital and so on.
The final point, which relates to our next contributor is that - this is where the group water scheme experience is so important - it needs to engage with the public in understanding what is happening and why, and engage their interest and enthusiasm in finding solutions. That is an essential prerequisite. Communication is not what we are talking about. It is not a question of Irish Water or whoever telling people what is going on, they need to be actively engaged in what is going on, to understand it and to understand the choices and their implications.
I happened to park in the Dawson Street parking lot to attend this meeting and I got a quote of €2,980 per month to be able to park there. I will pass around a sheet showing what the water bill is for different countries. It ranges from €200 in Italy up to €927 in Denmark. That is the range within which Ireland will operate. If you compare that with the cost of parking in Dawson Street, even the Danish rate, which is a major outlier, is dramatically good value in terms of what one gets for that outlay.