Ms Maria Graham:

I reiterate the point I made in my opening statement that a central component of water sector reform is to retain water services in public ownership. I draw the committee's attention to the letter issued to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, set out the existing protections reflected in water services legislation and indicated that, notwithstanding this, he is willing to facilitate the holding of a referendum. He acknowledges there is a Bill before this committee and there are issues around the timing of that and the challenge in framing the wording. However, he outlined his commitment to working with this committee over the coming months to address those matters. I thought it was important to put that on the record.