Yesterday the Taoiseach made it clear that he fully supports the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, and his intention to take water charges from people's wages, pensions and social welfare payments.

Including Deputy Adams's.

He disclosed to the House that the Minister has yet to put a proposal to the Cabinet but he refused to outline the legal basis for the process which he wholeheartedly supports. That would seem strange to most people but in Enda-land the absurd presents itself as a form of government. In Enda-land, we heard this morning that water charge bills will be issued by Irish Water to citizens who are not its customers. In Enda-land, bills will also be issued to households which have undrinkable water, including those who have to boil their water. In Enda-land, 150,000 properties with a private well and a sceptic tank will be billed by Irish Water. All of these citizens will be billed for a service they do not receive and the Taoiseach fully supports a process of deducting these bills from their wages, pensions or social welfare payments. Surely the Taoiseach will agree that is worthy of Flann O'Brien at his best. It would be laughable except that it is causing huge confusion and further anger.

Why should this concern the Taoiseach or the hecklers on his back benches? It is not their money because the taxpayers will be footing the bill for the bills they are being sent for a service they will not receive. In Enda-land, €85 million of taxpayers' money was paid to private consultants for their advice. How on earth are citizens to have any faith in the Government's water charges policy or, indeed, in the Government itself when those entrusted with running water services cannot even get the basics right?

In Gerry-land, the record shows that Deputy Adams agreed that he should pay for water until he heard the sound of marching feet and thought this was populism which required him to take a different stance.

It was because Deputy Paul Murphy came along.

The Government changed its stance 13 times because of marching feet.

I am sure he read the reports of water being contaminated with leachate because of diesel laundering in various parts of the country. I am sure that is of interest to him. Deputy Adams is the president of his party. It is about time people faced up to the reality that water has to be paid for.

It already is.

Every Deputy should observe what happens in a water treatment plant to understand the cost of producing quality water for consumers, businesses and people alike. It seems to be fine for some people to say we are all paying for this. They are happy to continue with a situation in which people have had to boil water for years, contend with inferior and inadequate sewerage facilities in their towns and villages or are condemned to an inadequate infrastructure. It is time that Deputy Adams faces the reality. This Government has listened carefully to the great number of people who expressed their concerns and anxieties. The charge for water is €1.15 per week or €3 if there are two or more adults in the house. By any scale, these are modest contributions to make for quality water.

That is not true. It is not modest by any scale. That is where he is wrong.

Deputy Adams's party seems to want a system where it can increase income tax and introduce a raft of new charges, including commercial rates, land tax and corporation tax, to pay for some utopian land in which seems to live. It is not Enda-land or Gerry-land; it is fantasy land.

In Enda-land, he wants to screw people on small money.

The people of this country have faced difficult choices in the last number of years. We are now emerging from a recession. I note the reports which indicate that Ireland is a leading economy in a European sense. Our challenge is to manage this carefully for the generation coming behind us. Nobody believes that people should not make a contribution for water. When someone turns on a tap, whether in Donegal, Louth, Clontarf, Kerry or Waterford, somebody has to pay for what comes out. I am not happy with a situation in which thousands of people are drinking water supplied through lead pipes-----

Then get the lead out.

-----thousands of people have an inferior water system or thousands of people have to say, with their sense of pride, that there are no sewerage facilities in their towns or villages. We have to deal with that reality and I support the Minister, Deputy Kelly, in his efforts to provide a proper system of clean, high quality water for consumers, businesses and people all over the country. When he brings his recommendations to the Cabinet, we will consider them and deal with them in the interest of our country.

The Government has spent €540 million on meters but only €50 million on the leaking pipes he decries so much. He refused to answer my question, once again. Is it not ironic that a Labour Party Minister, the Minister for making it up as he goes along, is responsible for this mess? In Opposition the Labour Party firmly ruled out the introduction of water charges but it has since emerged that it was planning to introduce water charges since 2010. An internal Labour Party memo prepared for its then leader, Deputy Gilmore, and the then deputy leader, the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, clearly outlined plans for the introduction of water charges and the installation of water meters. Now we know where the Labour Party stood on this issue all along, despite what it told the electorate.

Yesterday I asked the Taoiseach whether he had spoken to his old pal, Phil Hogan, about his unminuted and unrecorded meetings with the chair of Bord Gáis on the establishment of Irish Water. The Taoiseach refused to answer my question or to authorise an Oireachtas inquiry into this serious matter. Given the latest revelations about this billing debacle, is it not time he acknowledged that his party and the Labour Party have no mandate and that there is no sense in what they are doing in respect of water charges? I ask him once again to scrap these charges or, failing that, to get an exit visa from Enda-land and call a general election on this issue.

It is normal practice to address Deputies as Deputy, Ministers as Minister and the Taoiseach as Taoiseach and I do not want any practice to creep in here of calling this country anybody's land.