I rise to address a concern that Councillor Michael Boyle raised yesterday in respect of Donegal. I compliment him on raising what will be a huge concern all over Ireland. It is that Irish Water has sent out notification that it intends to switch off water. I know it is putting in a hose-pipe ban and that is fair enough because people do not need to wash cars or water lawns at this time of year. However, it is talking about switching off water when we have livestock and farmers and we have temperatures in excess of what we are used to. Some of these are elderly farmers. Some farmers might not even have received the notice. To switch off water on a farm during weather like this is cruel. It is inhumane. Cattle will go crazy if they do not have water. They can live without grass for a certain amount of time but we cannot switch water off for animals in this sort of weather.

In this day and age, I cannot understand how Irish Water cannot provide a service. There are water-harvesting systems all over the world. Do we not have a back-up system for when we get 14 or 20 days of good weather? Every year this happens. We see a hose-pipe ban and water shortages. It is crazy, given the amount of rainfall we get over the year, to say that we have a water shortage in Ireland again and to send out letters to elderly people. I hope somebody from Irish Water will address this in the media in the short term, rather than frightening farmers once again with talk about switching off water for their livestock.