Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to refer to the comments of the two previous speakers which were on the privatisation of water. I have a letter here from SIPTU and its members where in Limerick alone, the county council wants 70 of their water and water treatment system workers to transfer to Irish Water. We are talking here about not privatising water yet this transfer has to be done by 2026. This represents 70 of the local authority workers who are working in the water services who are being told at the moment that they are not being forced but are being asked to change over to Irish Water, and that the county council wants this framework done by 2026. It appears to me that the Government is looking at privatising our water system completely where it is bringing over local authority workers from their local authority work to Irish Water. In the absence of a collective agreement or of a rejection of the framework document, some are advocating that the Government would be enabled to implement section 19 of the Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013, which provides for compulsory transfer of a number of matters to Irish Water.