I listened very carefully to the Minister's contribution, and I have to say it was somewhat disappointing. There is no doubt that many aspects of our drinking water and wastewater systems work, and work well. I want to put on record that there have been improvements in recent years in parts of the country in the operation of the utility. However, as the Minister has heard from the Deputies proposing the motion, and as he will hear from my colleagues, there are many parts of this country where our water and wastewater treatment services are not working adequately. While the focus of this debate is on Uisce Éireann, much of the responsibility for those failures lies in fact with the Government. The Minister talked about significant increases in funding, but what he failed to mention, of course, was that Uisce Éireann came to the Government over two years ago seeking very significant increases in capital expenditure to meet the demand for increased water and wastewater treatment facilities in urban and rural Ireland. The Government delayed for over two years, but still today, despite the big announcement at the budget, it is unclear how much money is going to be available, when it is going to be available and for what projects. When we were dealing with the Planning and Development Bill with the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the utilities, including Uisce Éireann, made a very strong and compelling case to the committee that there needed to be a number of key reforms to the planning system to expedite those increased treatment facilities. We need to prioritise critical infrastructure. We need to have parallel consenting and planning approvals, and dramatic increases in staffing, both for the Planning and Environment Court and for our planning authorities. When we tabled amendments to that Bill, the Minister's party and his predecessor opposed them. Now, here we are, two years later, and the Minister is saying he is thinking about introducing the very same crucial planning reforms that we proposed over two years ago. We also have significant EU infringement proceedings against the State for failures to transpose and, crucially, comply with both the urban wastewater treatment directive and the drinking water directive. In fact, the most recent of those infringement proceedings was initiated last year while Deputy Browne was the Minister in charge. While the number of wastewater treatment plants pouring raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas has reduced, it is still unacceptably high. The Minister's failure to provide sufficient capital funding and planning reforms is delaying the ability of the utility to address those. There are also very significant legacy issues. We have already heard about the slow pace of addressing leakage, both in urban and rural Ireland, within the existing system. However, we also have over 400 housing estates that still have legacy issues arising from Celtic tiger era relating to developer-provided infrastructure, primarily in rural communities. The Government is not providing sufficient funding to the utility and local authorities to address all of those. The Minister rightly mentioned that there were challenges and inadequacies in Uisce Éireann's communication with communities and elected representatives, particularly with local councillors, and especially in those areas, whether Cork, Donegal or elsewhere, where we are seeing some of the most significant challenges. There is a solution to that. We need to have a statutory requirement on the utility to engage in a structured manner with elected representatives and local authorities, as well as with these Houses. That is something the Minister could do as a matter of urgency. There are many other issues that I will raise, but I will finish on this. Water is a fundamental human right. It is essential to the well-being of people, families and communities. It must be delivered by a public utility, free at the point of delivery, on the basis of need. We are not there yet. Sinn Féin will continue to make the case for those reforms. The Government is not doing enough, and it is a pity the Minister did not acknowledge that in his remarks.

Sentiment score: -0.02