Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the question has been asked, I would like to answer it, if the Chair agrees.

One of the most important assets that Irish Water has is its staff, the people who transferred to that organisation to do the very important work that needs to be done up and down the country. Obviously, service level agreements were put in place. These originally went to 2025, not 2026. Irish Water has come together as a single utility for the country and is working with the local authorities. It has been bringing in staff from local authorities and maintaining agreements with individual local authorities. It has taken on assets and is improving them and improving our water infrastructure. Irish Water has seen the possibility of expediting that. The potential savings that would accrue to the body and to the State as a result would be potentially €1 billion.

When Irish Water consulted me on whether it should pursue this, I agreed that it should but I was very clear in my conversations with it that this would only work if it could be done in agreement with the staff in terms of making sure that people were happy that there would be no diminution of their salary or pension benefits. No decision has been made but this is something we are progressing to see if we can do it. We have a piece of work ongoing in NewERA to make sure that benefits such as pensions would be safe because that is essential if this is to be successful. That piece of work is happening at present under the Water Services Act. We have not come to a conclusion on it, but we are doing this with the utmost care and consultation with the relevant people involved to make sure that they understand exactly what is being proposed and that we can all be certain that there will be no negative effect on pay, conditions and pensions.