Mr. Brendan O'Brien:

The most important question is what a future utility will look like. A major weather event, Storm Emma, resulted in water shortages, rationing and other problems over a number of weeks. The response in Dublin involved Irish Water and the four local authorities deciding on how to address the issue as a matter of urgency to try to ensure it does not happen again. A number of measures had to be taken to rebuild water capacity. As the committee knows, Dublin uses 100% of the water it produces. There are issues with broken and lead pipes. In recent weeks, we sat down with the four local authorities, in conjunction with Irish Water, to decide to fix the water problem in Dublin. This has involved putting in place a plan to fix a range of issues, rebuild capacity and ensure there is resilience in the system because that is absent at the moment.

On what a future setup would look like, what is happening in Dublin provides a very good example of what a publicly provided utility could look like. We have demonstrated that the model could work and be replicated in Munster, Leinster, Connaught, the northern counties and so on. Instead of spending a number of years debating what a single utility looks like, we have shown what a publicly provided single utility would look like in future. In a couple of years' time there will be substantial progress in Dublin where, it is hoped, most, if not all, of the serious infrastructural issues will have been dealt with. We ask the committee to examine the model being implemented in Dublin as a way of addressing the issue. It may be the best way of addressing the issues that have to be dealt with throughout the country.

Reference was made to apprenticeships and traineeships. I remind the committee that under the public service agreement there are commitments on apprenticeships. We have advocated for local authorities to renew their involvement in the uptake of apprenticeships and we are actively pursuing that. We have asked Irish Water to do the same. If it is working with communities, it needs to assist them in that regard. We advocate that the company allocate money from its budget to deliver in that area.

I echo Mr. Berney's question. Transferring jobs from local authorities and making people contractors would be detrimental for communities because good, steady community based jobs would be taken from some areas and moved to other jurisdictions. People would no longer have certainty of a job in their community while rearing their children. They would be rearing children just to export them. Losing these jobs would be extremely damaging.