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

I thank Deputy Collins, Mr. Ó Tuathail and Ms Brannick O'Cillín for both the legislation and the presentations. Before I ask my questions, I wish to put two general comments on the record. The first is that it is significant that the single largest issue on which the expert commission received submissions of interest was, as Deputy Collins has outlined, the issue of the need for a referendum to protect the public ownership of the water and water services. That is testament to how significant an issue this is among the public. There were many things that those of us who sat through the 11 or 12 weeks of the hearings of the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services did not agree on, but it is also significant that this was one of the issues, in terms of the core principle behind this Bill, on which we ended up reaching agreement. We wanted to see such a constitutional protection, whatever the eventual wording.

The other point is that water is different. Sometimes this gets lost in the public debate. It is not like other so-called utilities. Unlike fossil fuels that can be replaced by renewable energies etc., water is not replaceable. Water is an increasingly finite resource and we are seeing in other parts of the world how the failure to manage this strategic asset adequately in the public interest is causing social, economic and cultural problems. This is one of the most compelling arguments why this particular public resource needs to be retained in public ownership.

We received a briefing document from the Department. It does not have an awful lot to say about the legislation but it raises a number of possible concerns. I would be interested to hear the responses of Mr. Ó Tuathail and Ms Brannick O'Cillín to those concerns from a legal point of view. The Department seems to be suggesting that there could be so-called unintended consequences if the wording of a constitutional amendment is not drafted carefully. That is, that somehow assets which currently are private assets - privately owned boreholes, wells or group water schemes - could somehow be dragged into the definition of the public system.

What are the witnesses' views on it? Do they think that there is currently any legal confusion about what is a public asset and what is a private asset? If we were to pass this text into the Constitution by way of referendum, do they think it would allow assets which are today clearly private assets to be incorporated into the public system against the wishes of the owners of these assets?

The other issue that came up in the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services is this business of whether the State could sell decommissioned assets of the water system. As we know, we have far too many water treatment plants. Many of them are old and in a state of disrepair. Irish Water has a plan to replace them and build new ones. We will then have many of these facilities which will no longer be in use and therefore decommissioned and not part of the water system. Is there anything in this text which would prevent Irish Water or any other public utility from selling those decommissioned assets once they are no longer part of the system? Those are my questions. Depending on how others proceed, I may come back with more.