I thank the Chair. I will be taking the time of Deputy Gogarty as he is detained. I thank the Minister for his speech. He mentioned a minute and a half into it that Uisce Éireann has a dedicated service not only for elected representatives but also for the most vulnerable. I have attended many of the meetings with Uisce Éireann. As Members may be aware, I have raised in this House the appalling water conditions on the northside of Cork city and the southside, in the Taoiseach's own constituency. Questions were put to Uisce Éireann on vulnerable people with brown water, lead in water and water that is undrinkable. We asked what happens if the person affected is visually impaired. The reply from the engineers of Uisce Éireann was that he or she should be asked to call a neighbour or ring a friend so they could possibly check the water for him or her or fill jugs of water the night before an issue arises. That is not a proper answer for somebody who is visually impaired. When Uisce Éireann gives the Minister some speaking notes for this House, I do not know if it is being 100% accurate. I want to refer to my own constituency, Cork North-Central. We received a briefing not so long ago from Uisce Éireann telling us that replacing the lead pipes and broken pipes in the constituency would entail a €1 billion project. That is not frightening money when we realise the amount of infrastructure needed. We were told that if in a wonderful world the Department of Finance granted the €1 billion needed for the northside of the city, it would take, at the current rate of delivery of Uisce Éireann across Cork, 96 years to replace every broken pipe that has been in place since Victorian times. That is what we are told in Cork. I have brought the water into this House and showed it to the Taoiseach. I am sure he has been in houses on the southside of the city – around the Turners Cross area, where he is from originally – where the water is brown and murky even if left running for three to six hours. People cannot take showers, bathe children or put a load in the washing machine. There are people who have had to replace shower units three, four or five times in the past three years. People have had to replace washing machines and people have had expensive bedding destroyed because they did not know what was going to come out of the tap. People cannot fill a kettle any more. Pubs and cafes are running a risk. Most pubs on the northside of the city and in parts of the city centre have disconnected their ice machines. We do not know when we wake up in the morning whether we can actually go to the tap and have a glass of water, something you would think is a basic right. Very often, we turn on our televisions and see appeals for villages in Africa or footage of water coming out of taps in African villages. That brown, dirty, murky water is exactly the same colour as the water coming out of the taps in Cork city. The Minister should reflect on that for a moment. That is what people on the northside, in my constituency, and parts of the southside of the city, in the Taoiseach's own constituency, must deal with daily. They have been doing so not for one, two or three months but for over five years. They have been putting up with it for over five years, only to be told a billion euro is needed and that they must wait 90 years. How can someone sell a home in Gurranabraher or Turners Cross if they cannot guarantee an engineer's report showing the water coming into that structure is safe and consumable? We talk about water outages and burst pipes. We have had burst pipes. As public representatives, we are down on our knees, like we were over New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and the following days, begging for some water tankers for the Ballyvolane and Mayfield areas of Cork city, because people can be without water for up to six days at a time. That is what we are dealing with when dealing with Uisce Éireann. The Minister mentioned the national representative line, which, as he has mentioned here, has received over 100,000 complaints. When you pick it up and state you are a TD, local councillor or local representative for a certain party, you are asked in the first instance, before the representation can be opened, for an eircode. This is despite the fact that you are talking about an entire community that has suffered from water damage, pipe breakage, unavailable water, or brown, dirty, filthy water coming through its pipes. The person asking for the eircode is just somebody assigned to the local area representatives' telephone line on the day rather than a provider of a dedicated service that understands the need of a community representative, local councillor or TD who is calling on behalf of a wider community. The EPA has not been down to Cork. It has come and looked at the water and said there is a problem and that it will do this and that examination. I recognise that money has been spent in Cork city, but it has not been spent fast enough and has not been allocated in sufficient quantities, by any means. Considering that we have been told it will take 90 years to repair the problem, the Minister and I will not see the day when Cork has fresh water on the northside and when the pipes will run clear in all of the northside of the city. That is absolutely an atrocity and a shame. My colleague in Aontú said earlier that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael do not do infrastructure well. They do not do infrastructure at all. Let me give an example of something I have come across: a statement of design acceptance, SoDA, report. Recently, I was contacted by a developer who was ready to break ground. He was told before he applied for planning permission for 90 houses in the Ballyvolane area that he needed something called a SoDA report. Honestly, I had never heard of it myself. I had to contact Uisce Éireann on 12 separate occasions by email and telephone, asking if I could get the SoDA report so this gentleman could go in and apply for planning. That was just to confirm that there was a water treatment facility. By the way, the water treatment facility was about 200 m from the site, but he could not go to Cork City Council and apply for planning. What happened then? It was delayed by nine months, and the price of houses is now up by almost €80,000 from what he intended to sell them for in the first place. That is what we are up against. We have spoken about 35% leakage in Dublin. The leakage around the country is at an average of 40% and in some places, it is as high as 56%. We talk about infrastructure and what we can deliver around the country. I noticed that in Blarney in my own constituency, Cork City Council had to dezone hectares of land because Uisce Éireann came along and said it had no intention whatsoever of developing any water treatment in Blarney for the next 20 years. That will result in no houses being built in a satellite village outside Cork city centre. As the Minister may know, Blarney has been part of Cork city because it has been extended into the city in the last number of years. We are looking at a satellite village - my mother and father's parish of Blarney - where the people who want to stay in Blarney and invest in Blarney have no opportunity to buy a brand-new home in Blarney, and second-hand homes are just not coming up, full stop. That is what we are left with when it comes to the lack of infrastructure around my constituency in Cork. I have looked at the Minister's response. I do not know if a civil servant wrote it for him. I do not know if Uisce Éireann gave him a press statement to read out. However, it seems that, far too often, Ministers in all the different Departments of this Government, who are operating as chairmen of their Departments, are handed scripts to read and told, “Here you go, there is the answer, do not worry about it, the best thing you can do is get out of this office and go down and cut a ribbon in Waterford, then head up to Donegal after that and unveil a plaque, here is a speech to read, turn a sod here and turn a sod there, off you go and stay out of our way because we are the permanent government.” That seems to be the day-to-day business of the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Administration because of poor decisions made at the top, putting people into jobs that, first, they are not interested in doing and, second, where they are looking for another gig somewhere else and their priorities are not fixing the problems that are there in front of them.

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