On 15 January the Taoiseach said to me and the House:

This is a public utility in public ownership. Therefore, there is nothing that should be secret about it and there is nothing that will be secret about it.

That was in respect of the establishment of Irish Water. It is fair to say that everything has been secret about Irish Water and that over the past 12 to 15 months, the Government has done everything it possibly can to prevent the truth from coming out and to prevent a fully comprehensive debate around the issue of establishing Irish Water. Everything has been secret about the cost of the establishment of Irish Water until recently when we learned through radio interviews that it was €180 million. The cost of the transition office was a closely guarded secret until the weekend when we found out that approximately €8 million was spent on setting up the transition office. The cost of establishing Irish Water under the aegis of Bord Gáis Éireann has been a well-kept secret. Despite the Government getting advice to the contrary, it decided to do it this way with vast costs. The cost and content of the service level agreements have also been kept a closely guarded secret. Now we are told they can add €2 billion to the cost of the establishment of Irish Water.

All of this will result in higher charges for the public. However, the public will not be told what they have to pay in water charges because that will be a closely guarded secret as well until well beyond the local elections and into next year. Then, the regulator will be put in, superimposed, as a basis for not giving the people any sense of how much water will cost them because of the excessive nature of the establishment of Irish Water and the costs involved.

Last week I asked the Taoiseach if he knew that retired county managers and senior public servants were moving seamlessly into Irish Water and if he thought it was in order for them to do so, even though they may have enjoyed generous severance and pension packages. The Taoiseach said he did not know. However, he must have known and it is inconceivable that he did not know and that he did not speak to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, about it. We know now that one such county manager received approximately €336,000 in a generous package before moving to Irish Water. Lo and behold, the same individual headed up the transition office. The transition office decided how many people got jobs at senior management level and that same person got a senior job in Irish Water. The people who wrote to us from outside of the loop, local authorities and Bord Gáis-----

Deputy, please put your question.

-----had a point when they said that there was no point in applying because the jobs were spoken for already and that there was an element of an inside track.

Does the Taoiseach believe that was right or that it was appropriate and correct? Will the Taoiseach undertake to publish all material now in respect of Irish Water? Will he publish all the service level agreements? Will he publish the cost-benefit analysis in respect of the installation of water meters? Will he indicate whether he believes the manner in which people have moved from the local authorities to Irish Water is appropriate?

Deputy Martin has raised several issues, if I may say so. Clearly, last year it was perfectly obvious from Government that the cost of the establishment of Irish Water would have a headline figure of €180 million.

PricewaterhouseCoopers carried out an analysis and recommended that there be a greenfield operation. The Government is about making decisions. Since the setting up of a new utility involved 34 different local authorities, Bord na Móna and Bord Gáis submitted tenders for the setting up of the utility. The tenders were evaluated by NewERA and the Government made its decision to set up a new utility called Uisce Éireann or Irish Water, on the basis that it would have costs somewhere in excess of €80 million to €85 million extra were we to set it up as an individual new utility on a greenfield site.

The service level agreements are on the website of Irish Water and there is nothing secret about that. The comments made yesterday by the eminent economist, John FitzGerald, received a good deal of attention. He also said that there would be considerable savings through what was envisaged with Irish Water with the capacity to reduce the national debt significantly. I differ with the respected economist on the basis that he seems to assume Irish Water would have the same number of employees at the end of 2025 as it has taken on board along with the contract agreements with the councils.

The point is where we should have a real discussion. When the financial and business model for Irish Water is published in the coming weeks, it will indicate that the costs set out to be incurred by Irish Water will only be incurred as a consequence of serving the customers' needs, not the needs of the staff of Irish Water or Irish Water itself. It is about the needs of its customers. The financial and business plan will also demonstrate how it is expected to reduce the headcount by approximately 50% within ten years. That is where the real discussion will take place, on the basis of actual propositions for the setting up of the financial and business model for Irish Water.

In respect of Deputy Martin's question last week, as I understand it, three persons who retired from county councils and received lump sums and pensions were recruited under open competition for Irish Water. Deputy Martin is aware of the position in so far as the public service is concerned and the capacity of people who get further jobs in the public service and the limitations on what they can earn. Irish Water is not part of the public service, as such, in that it is to be a commercial semi-State body. There are views that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has an authority under section 27 of the Act, and he will look at that.

Far from Deputy Martin's assertion that this is some sort of secret organisation that has nothing to do with the public-----

A disaster.

-----I remind Deputy Martin that his party now favours a continuation of the status quo, that is, 34 local authorities with all the staff contained therein and with higher costs. What Deputy Martin wants to do is leave the situation as is. That means he is happy for 18,000 people to have boil water notices and he is happy to have a million homes where there is a need for serious action in terms of increasing the quality of the water and the integrity of the system. All this means Deputy Martin is happy to leave a sticking plaster job continue in many places throughout the country where we are out of line in terms of standards, capacity, integrity and quality of the water.

I suppose the Government is going to fix it.

This needs to be dealt with. The way to deal with it is by setting up a new utility, Irish Water, with the capacity to borrow on the open markets for infrastructural development to provide for the needs of our country for the next 50 years.

It is a super-quango.

Deputy Martin may be happy to leave it the way it is, but I am not. There is nothing secret about Irish Water. Any more information Deputy Martin wants to be published about it will be published. I have given that instruction to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to see that Irish Water puts up all the information on its website.

The Taoiseach had to instruct him. He would not answer questions on it before Christmas.

Deputy, will you stay quiet, please?

This is in order that Deputy Healy-Rae and all the others have access to that as well as the public.

Sorry, we are way over time, Taoiseach. Thank you.

This is a publicly owned utility and therefore there will be nothing secret about it.

The Minister would not answer questions on it before Christmas.

Would you stay quiet, Deputy, please?

There may be areas, as Deputy Martin is well aware, where there is commercial detail that is particular to Irish Water. However, the majority of information about this utility is public knowledge and, if it is not, it will continue to become public knowledge in the time ahead.

The Taoiseach's answer has no credibility and is not correct. Everything we have found out to date has been via the media, not from the Taoiseach or the Minister, Deputy Hogan. I will leave others to judge the statement I have just made. The Taoiseach should not come to the House and try to pretend there has been full transparency from the Government in the past 12 to 15 months in respect of the establishment of Irish Water. It is through the media that we have learned the bulk of what has come out in recent weeks in respect of the establishment of Irish Water.

The other point to make is that the Taoiseach was warned by his own advisers that going down this route would be much more costly. He was not told that setting up a separate entity, free from Bord Gáis, would cost much more, he was told that if the new body was set up under Bord Gáis, it would cost much more than the Government intended. That is the advice the Taoiseach received. He is still refusing to answer a question I have asked on at least four occasions, whether it is right that people should move across from one sector to the next. Does he not accept that this fuels cynicism, particularly when one of these individuals is heading up the transition?

The Deputy is over time.

Who came up with the idea of the transition office only the county managers? Over half the staff come from the local authorities, which is a factor in the €180 million cost element.

Will the Deputy put a question to the Taoiseach?

In terms of the charges facing households, it now looks like they could be anything up to €500. Can the Taoiseach shed any light on what people will be paying in water charges in January 2015, particularly in the context of the enormous expenditure in which the Government has engaged? The ESRI report refers to a full cost recovery model in terms of the submission to Irish Water and in terms of the accountancy trick vis-à-vis the debt-to-GDP ratio.

There has been a lot of talk about accepting advice. As I pointed out to the Deputy last week, the Government of which he was a member paid €7 million for three days work by financial advisers before landing this country with the greatest economic catastrophe it has ever experienced. His Government did not accept that advice. Deputy Martin should not come in here claiming a wonderful antiseptic, untainted political record in terms of dealing with the public accounts. Nor do I accept the assertion that people will be paid for doing nothing in Irish Water. As I said, we will publish the financial and business models for Irish Water in the coming weeks, showing that the reductions in headcount in the coming years as people reach pension age and so on will leave it with in the order of 2,000 staff, down from 4,300.

Deputy Martin asked about the charges for households. I recall two occasions in the past three years where Members opposite said that in rectifying the situation in regard to septic tanks, an issue that has been going on for 40 years and which Fianna Fáil in government was afraid to touch, some people would be charged €20,000. That claim was made by Deputy Martin's former deputy leader.

Mattie was only charging a fiver.

Not a single grant has been paid out.

The Taoiseach is over time.

We also had people on the benches opposite saying that thousands of euro in charges would be heaped on top of people under the property tax. Members opposite are all on record as having said that.

As I said, in the coming weeks the Government will publish the financial and business models for Irish Water. The only charges to be incurred here will be in respect of consumers, that is, the customers of Irish Water.

That is not the case at all. The Taoiseach should read his own Government's economic submission.

We are six minutes over time on this question. I ask Members to adhere to the rules.

The Government will deliver the level of charge as a matter of policy and the regulator will have an input into that. It is about the Irish consumer.

The Taoiseach is hiding behind the regulator again.

Before proceeding, I ask Members to adhere to the rules set down by the House. This question went over time by six minutes. I have to be fair to everybody who wants to speak. I ask Members and the Taoiseach to keep that in mind when asking and replying to questions.