Tánaiste Joan Burton has told the Dáil she believes good progress has been made in addressing the Irish Water issue.
She did not however confirm her remarks earlier in the week that a family of four adults would pay less than €200 a year in water charges.
Instead, she said her objective and that of the Government was to have a charging regime that was “affordable and where there is clarity and where there is certainty in relation to the pricing structure”.
Ms Burton was responding to Fianna Fáil's Timmy Dooley, who said the Taoiseach described the Tánaiste as expressing a personal view when she suggested the charge for four adults would be €200. During Leaders' Questions Mr Dooley had asked her: "It is now your professional view that €200 will now be the charge for a family of two adults and two adult children?"
She said: “I believe very solid, very good progress has been made in relation to Irish Water.”
Mr Dooley called on the Government to “halt the runaway train” and allow TDs to fully debate the issue, a debate “that was denied them in December when the Bill on water charges was rammed through the House and down the throats of Irish people”.
He said it was “not too late to pause the charging structure for a number of months, allow a comprehensive debate and produce a plan that will meet citizens’ needs and take account of their ability to pay”.
Ms Burton said the Government had an ambitious programme of investment in Irish Water amounting to more than €10 billion over the next 10 years. She said they were using the same model as was used by ESB and Bord Gáis as publicly owned utilities, “to bring forward desperately needed investment in the country’s infrastructure”.
Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said the only progress report people wanted to hear was that the Government was going to abolish Irish Water “no ifs, no buts, no bribes, no threats. That would provide clarity.”
There followed heated and cutting exchanges as Ms Burton pointed to the fundraising dinner party leader Gerry Adams was to attend last night in New York at $500 a head.
Ms Burton accused the Sinn Féin leadership of “living between two continents”.
She said: “You live here for the purposes of ordinary life and for the purposes of high life you jet off around the world to eat dinners in luxury hotels that cost more than what will be the average water charge, potentially for a couple of years.”
Ms Burton said Mr Adams was a regular visitor to the US and received his health treatment there and did not use the Irish health system. The Tánaiste also hit out at Sinn Féin changing its mind from agreeing to pay the water charges to then opposing them.
But Ms McDonald hit back and accused her of making a “pathetic” comedic effort to divert from the central issue of water charges and said it would cut no ice with the public, who could not pay €200 or €100.
Ms McDonald said she lived in the real world and if the Tánaiste had any sense about what the real world was like “you will abolish those charges”. The Tánaiste said the people Ms McDonald was talking about were precisely the people she was concerned about and the Government had made provision for a water conservation payment of €100 for each household.
