Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has described the deal on water charges as "a victory for sensible politics''.
The Minister told the Dáil he wanted to thank all those involved, and Fianna Fáil in particular, for its willingness to commit to a process nine months ago and follow through with it.
The Minister told the Dáil there were certain facts from that they could not hide.
“We require significant investment in our water infrastructure to address years of underinvestment and support the modern economy that we are trying to build,’’ he said.
“We cannot walk away from our obligations, including those we face from the EU water framework directive.’’
Mr Coveney said earlier drafts of the committee’s report last week raised significant concerns for Fine Gael members of the committee and more broadly for him and the Government.
He believed, on the basis of legal advice to him, that last week’s amended report would clearly fail to satisfy Ireland’s EU obligations with a significant consequence of potential fines which the Irish taxpayer would ultimately have to fund.
‘Key aspects’
“I am very pleased the report has come back on track with the benefit of further committee legal advice around key aspects.
Households responsible for the wastage or excess use of water would be required to pay but a generous allowance would apply for households consuming normal volumes of water paid for through taxation.
Fianna Fáil environment spokesman Barry Cowen said some in the House were shirking the responsibility to deal with the issue.
He said Labour’s Alan Kelly was still spinning from the number of U-turns he made as a minister and continued to suffer from an “angry Stockholm syndrome, a political Patty Hearst’’.
He said Mr Kelly had failed to admit it was his own government that had ended the EU derogation in 2013.
Mr Cowen said Fianna Fáil had entered into a “confidence and supply’’ arrangement with Fine Gael while other parties were content to take a 10-week holiday.
“The country did not want another election because it would have resolved nothing,’’ he added.
He said ending the failed water charges’ regime was foremost among Fianna Fáil’s objectives.
Abolished
He said the central outcome from the committee for his party was that the water charges’ regime was abolished and more than 92 per cent of households will not pay for water.
He said the remaining 8 per cent would be given the opportunity to apply for exemption on grounds such as a large family or medical condition.
People who wasted water would be penalised under the 2007 Act, Mr Cowen added.
Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said many of the arguments in the committee would be replayed on the floor of the Dáil because there was no agreement on what the proper metric was for so-called excessive use and penalties would only be applied to households that have meters.
The penalties would only apply to 60 per cent of householders because 40 per cent were not metered and this might be unconstitutional and would certainly be unfair.
“The Oireachtas Water Committee received nine separate pieces of legal opinion from six different sources. They all gave conflicting advice,” he said.
But he warned that “any attempt to use the room granted by Fianna Fáil to introduce water charges through the back door will be met with the same mass campaign that dogged the previous Government”.
Labour housing spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said this should not be about political point scoring but about an essential commodity that costs a lot of money to be treated and for waste water to be removed. She said the European Commission and the water directive was not there to impose some kind of penalty on the Irish people but to ensure that we do look after our water and carefully ensure that we don’t pollute our environment.
