I am wondering if there is any possibility of some legislation to reform the entity of so-called Uisce Éireann, Irish Water. The town of Clonmel serves roughly 20,000 people. There are water outages on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. I salute former official Jimmy Harney and others and present officials trying to get a source from the River Suir and a treatment plant. Indeed, there is a landowner willing to sell the site. However, there is no movement from Irish Water. It does not have a penny to do anything. The business people, ordinary families, hospitals, everybody else and every industry is out of water on a daily basis, or on a weekly basis certainly, and sometimes for whole weekends and weeks. Heading to the driest period of the year, August and September, I shudder to think what will happen to the people. It is just not fair and it is not viable for them to continue. It has a huge impact on their lives and business. They are going around to neighbours and elsewhere to get a shower. It is just pathetic at the moment. We need some kind of reform and accountability from Irish Water.

I met with the CEO and senior team of Irish Water just in the past two weeks. As the Deputy can imagine, these issues are brought to my attention all the time. Often, smaller towns around the country that need to expand cannot because wastewater services are not available. There is industry that cannot be built because water is not available. In some cases, housing developments cannot proceed because water services are not available. In fairness to Irish Water, it pointed out to me that it has a pretty massive capital programme under way at the moment of about €1 billion a year. The capacity to go beyond that is actually limited, given the availability of materials, staff and so on. It has a very ambitious capital programme and it is being implemented. I just appreciate that it is not happening quickly enough for a lot of people.