Water: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West We had a motion here last week in relation to Irish Water. Anyone who looked seriously at the motion would see it was simply put: accountability and timelines. The Minister of State's side refused to agree to that motion. It was very simple. They could have made an adjustment, they could have done something about it but they did not want to because the Government does not want accountability. It is aiding and abetting Uisce Éireann from avoiding accountability. The Minister of State knows this as well as I do. He is from the same constituency as me. Talk to the people of Shannonvale, Rosscarbery, Dunmanway, Ballydehob and Goleen. I joined the community council in Goleen in 1999. I am still on the community council. We brought people from all over the world who had property and who would have worked with the local authority at that time to try to see if we could put in place a new wastewater treatment plant and we were not able to do so. There is raw sewage still pouring into the tide in Goleen - imagine that - since 1999. It is astonishing. The EPA is asleep at the wheel. It is quite happy to accept all of what goes on because it is like a scam. That is all you can call it. I keep saying that. If a farmer's house is not in order and his cattle house is leaking raw slurry into the river, he is put out of business, he is closed down and he moves on. There is no acceptability on it, and there probably should not be, but it seems to be a law for one and not for another. We did succeed, and there is no point in my being critical here, in relation to Adrigole. I know there is no bucket on the ground yet but we have to look at the positive side of the messages being sent. However, it is hard to get that message. Lord God, it is like squeezing blood out of a turnip, and none of us can do that, to get a straight answer from Uisce Éireann. If the Minister of State were to see some of the nonsensical, generic answers I am getting, it is not good enough. The Government is pumping the billions into this so it will have to sit down and get answers, get accountability, get a timeline, and the people of Shannonvale, Rosscarbery, Dunmanway, Ballydehob and Goleen might have something to look forward to rather than an endless disgrace. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21