Danny Healy-Rae raises alarm over repeated rural water outages

Thank you very much, Lascao Coorle. Tanaiste, it's a basic human right in a civilised modern society to have a safe, clear, clean under uninterrupted water supply. Firstly, I have to say, Lascao Coorle, it may be construed that I have a conflict of interest because my company works sometimes for repairing and replacing water mains. But anyway, however, in many parts of Kerry, especially mid Kerry and the Killian Areas, residents, businesses, hotels are faced with a constant barrage of outages, day after day after day. Residents in places like Barley Mount, Ahadol, Lahab, Palace, Beaufort, from the Gafford to the Lower Cross, all along the border of Work Road, Beaufort to get across, people are tormented. People in the Fahadol, Stray, Fires, Milltown, Castlemaine, Farren Four, even Killianney Town and New Street the day before yesterday, are suffering outages, day after day. The long and the short of it, Tanaiste, the cause is the shambolic condition of the pipe network, much of which is obsolete and asbestos that needs to be replaced. Many of these asbestos pipes exceed the 35-year lifespan, and that means that they should be replaced. The largest asbestos pipe on the central regional water supply from Lakatan through Killian Areas to Tralee, supplying our hospitals and over 60,000 customers, is asbestos and is in a precarious condition, and needs to be urgently replaced. More often than not, it breaks in 22. If it weren't for our excellent Kerry County Council water repair crews, under Freddie Bartlett and others, using their vast experience, intelligence and expertise, to get the pipes repaired as quickly as possible, and save as much water as possible, and build up the pressure and restore the supply to customers. The situation will be very much worse. I also want to thank the fire brigade who have to be brought in in recent times to replenish the water supplies in the Killianna and Ahadau rights. It can't be right that the LGMA and the local authorities are trying to get rid of, to get these crews across to Irish water. These crews, engineers, technicians, general operatives that have given such a valuable service, it's not fair or right to be putting them under such pressure to move them across to Irish water this time. Many of these have worked for 20, 30 and even up to 40 years for Kerry County Council repairing the water. I value the experience that they bring to the water service, because I have worked with many of them going back in time. And I understand the value that they are to the water network system. Thanks very much Deputy, and I appreciate that we need to invest more in our water network. We are currently preparing the NDP review, which will set out the level of public investment in all forms of infrastructure between now and 2030. It's the update or refresh, if you like, of Project Ireland 2040. We expect to have that done in the next few months. And as part of that we are giving consideration to additional funding for Irish water. But there is a difficulty here, it's not insurmountable, but there is a difficulty here in that because Irish water is a state agency and is on the public balance sheet, when it comes to allocating money for Irish water it has to compete with the health service, with education, with justice when it comes to capital funding. The model that we had proposed previously was that it would be a publicly owned utility, a semi-state like ESB, for example, which would be able to borrow against its own balance sheet, against its own assets, using income from charges. And that would have created a lot more money to invest in water, and we could have done a lot more than we now can do. But that decision is made, and the ship has sailed on that issue. But I appreciate the point the Deputy makes, and we'll do our best to find additional capital for Irish water over the next couple of years. But there is an opportunity cost associated with it, that's money that can't then go into housing or public transport or health or education. And while we may be able to borrow at the moment at very low interest rates, we do still have a borrowing limit. And we do expect the European Central Bank to start unwinding quantitative easing around March next year, and the fiscal rules being reimposed in 2023. Thank you for your reply. And it is very clear that Irish water are underfunded, and it's very clear that the pipes need to be replaced and updated, because it's costing a bomb to keep repairing the breaks that's going on. Even the breaking fan forecast, I believe £35,000 each time it happens. That's a massive sum of money. I also want to highlight that people in other rural areas of Kerry, East Kerry, Scotland, Castle Island, Lyra-Crompan, Foyerys can't afford to pay for group water schemes. Because the usual cost is around €8,000 or €10,000 per house. But lo and behold, because Irish water are stranded for money, they are looking for €2,000 more from each house, on top of the group water scheme cost that Kerry County Council are charging. This is not fair. This is double charging. And people can't afford it. And they just have to drop the request or the application for the group water scheme, because of this additional cost that has recently been demanded by Irish Water of them. It has dropped five, six or seven group water schemes going ahead at the present time. Thank you very much, Lasko. Thanks, Deputy. I'm not sure if there was a question there, but I heard the points that you made, and I think they're very fair points and were very well made. In terms of the particular issues in relation to Kerry, if you want to send me on some more details about them, I'd be happy to take them up with Minister O'Brien and provide you with a more detailed reply. Thank you.