Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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45. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the status of the river basin management plan, including if he will amend it to reflect the fact that the majority of those elected to the Dáil were elected on an anti-water charges platform and that the derogation under Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive makes no specific requirement for cost recovery to rely on individual consumption. [11595/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Water Framework Directive (i.e. Directive 2000/60/EC of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy) establishes a common framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwater. The overall aim of the Directive is to maintain high and good status waters where they exist and to restore waters that do not currently adequately support aquatic ecosystems. River basin management planning, structured in 6-year cycles, is the tool prescribed by the Directive for achieving these aims. In July 2010, the first-cycle River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) for Ireland were published, covering the period up to 2015. The RBMPs, which were adopted by all the local authorities, describe the measures planned to protect and improve Ireland’s water environment covering rivers, lakes, groundwater, transitional (estuarine) and coastal waters.

Member States are required to outline in RBMPs the planned steps to implement Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive, which requires Member States to take account of the principle of recovery of the costs of water services, in accordance with the “polluter pays” principle. This is in order to ensure that water pricing policies incentivise the efficient use of water resources and, thereby, contribute to achieving the environmental objectives of the Directive. The first-cycle RBMPs set out the then Government’s intention to introduce domestic water charges and this was recognised in the European Commission’s 2012 report to the European Parliament and the European Council on the implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Ireland.

The second-cycle RBMPs for the period up to 2021 are in preparation at the moment, and the draft plans are due to be published in December 2016. A six-month public consultation process will take place in the first half of 2017, and the finalised second-cycle RBMPs are due for completion by the end of 2017. As such, the question of amending the second-cycle RBMPs does not immediately arise.

Nonetheless, it is clear that the RBMPs will have to take account of the Government’s commitment, under the confidence and supply arrangement agreed in the context of facilitating the formation of the current Government, to introduce and support legislation in the Oireachtas within six weeks of its appointment to provide for the suspension of domestic water charges for a period of nine months from the end of the current billing cycle (that is, from 1 July 2016). This will allow for the Oireachtas to decide on the enduring funding model for Irish Water upon consideration of the recommendations of an Expert Commission that is to be established within eight weeks of the Government’s appointment. The proposed details of the suspension will be set out in the legislation when published.

I expect that the Expert Commission will take full account of the requirements of the Water Framework Directive in its deliberations and I look forward to a constructive process of engagement in this area in the coming months.