Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. I repeat the apologies for the delay earlier. I appreciate that it was probably difficult for the witnesses sitting outside, but it was much more difficult in here. The witnesses probably had the better location for the time. I wish to make a couple of general points and I also have some questions. I believe the Public Water Forum is a good idea but, through no fault of its own, it has fallen victim to the broader political and policy arguments we have been having around water policy for the last while. There are two issues. The first is around the term "consumers". I always get nervous when we talk about consumers in the context of water because part of the disagreement is that when one starts to commodify something such as water and refer to people as consumers, it does change the relationship between the user of that service and the service itself. We do not speak of consumers in education or health; we talk about parents, patients or children. I know that is not the language used by the Public Water Forum water, which chooses its language very carefully, but it is important to acknowledge that it is not just an accidental choice of word. In the context of citizens’ engagement it is very important that we are talking about people, families, households and the person as the user of something, not as a market consumer.