Professor Tom Collins:

No problem. Arising from that experience, I began to get an understanding of the scale of this country's water supply problems, certainly in a rural context. The group sector had become so debilitated and degraded over the years that the European Commission ruled positively and definitively against Ireland in its court ruling. The other thing I gained from that experience was a conviction that there was a need for a national water authority. One of the issues we were confronted with at national level during that period was the fact that the State did not have the authority at local level to implement the changes that were necessary in group schemes even though it was picking up the responsibility for the fine which had been imposed on Ireland by the European court in its adjudication. I became and remain convinced of the need for a national authority.

I would like to set out the background to the Public Water Forum. Having been asked in 2015 to chair the new forum, I was subsequently asked to work with the CER to recruit its membership. The forum was established essentially to give a voice to the public on the issues affecting Irish water consumers. That is the primary responsibility of the forum. As I mentioned at the outset, there are 20 representatives of domestic users on the forum. When we were recruiting them, we deliberately selected people who had registered with Irish Water and people who had decided against registering with Irish Water. We tried to ensure we were not creating a community of believers among domestic users. We have also drawn 12 sectoral representatives from a variety of consumer groups, as noted in our documentation. The Public Water Forum has met on eight occasions since its establishment. Our secretarial service is supplied by the CER, but we are not supported by any particular technical or other resources. Nevertheless, we have managed to produce a number of consultation documents in response to a variety of calls issued by the CER, Irish Water, the Expert Commission on Domestic Public Water Services and this committee.

I wish to give the committee a sense of what the forum would like to happen as it goes forward and to set out a vision for our development. We have been in situfor a year. We have probably learned a bit about how the public voice might be better engaged when deliberations are taking place on the issues of water supply and quality. Two statutory forums on water services are operating at present: the Public Water Forum, which I am representing here today as the chair; and the National Rural Water Services Committee, which has replaced the old National Rural Water Monitoring Committee on a statutory basis. The Irish Water Stakeholder Forum is one of a number of other forums. The CER has a number of such forums in place. I suggest that if we were starting again - this might still be worth considering even through we have already started - it would be desirable in a general sense if there was just one forum that would be responsible for engaging the public in a meaningful and involved way with all matters relating to water services and water quality. My own sense is that the water debate in Ireland needs to be looked at in the context of wider debates on climate change, environmental management, the degradation of fresh water and groundwater sources and the overall sense that water is a barometer of the environmental health of the corpus of the country in which we live.

To the extent that we protect it, we protect the wider environment. A national forum should try to comprehend both the issue of water services and the issue of water quality. In structure, I would like to see a new forum. On an administrative basis this could evolve out of the existing two fora and in the first instance be established with representatives from both, and maybe some others as well. The role of the forum as I see it would be to monitor and evaluate water supply services and the protection of the fresh water resource with reference both to the wider social, economic and environmental aspirations of the country and to the European requirements. It would advise the Minister accordingly with regard to all initiatives under way or planned in this regard. If we were to put in place such a structure we would need to resource it. The entire expenditure of the public water forum last year was something in the region of €30,000. This is a very small-scale project in terms of drawing on the resources on the State. To give it meaningful presence in the context of staffing, it would obviously need a chief executive officer. It would also need an education and engagement specialist, who would deal with the public on consultational issues such as the river basins strategy, Irish Water's strategies, the strategy of the group water scheme and the wider debate on the protection of the environment. This education role would partner with the universities, the institutes of technology and schools on the subject of water in the environment. The forum would need technical expertise to support its thinking, policy development and commentary role. It would need a role in commissioning research, either to support its own thinking or to support the development and application of new knowledge on the priorities which it selects. Obviously it would also need a secretariat.

I am drawing here on the model which has been used in other such entities. The one I am most familiar with is the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, which I chaired for six years. All of the education stakeholders were involved on that council. It had the support of a very active technical and research expertise and had a budget of approximately €4.5 million per annum. I should say by way of closure that I have begun a process of discussion with project officials on these matters. I have a strong sense that the Minister is minded to move in a direction somewhat along the lines of what we are discussing, though of course I have not actually had any discussions with him on the matter.