Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am stretching this, so I beg the Acting Chair's indulgence. I ask that the Minister show some caution. There was a time when we could approach Irish Water with representations and those would go into a central repository, where they would be handled by a third party and so on. There are issues around that. I will be so bold as to make a suggestion. I take the Minister's point that it should not necessarily be put on a statutory basis, but there has to be recognition of the role of the public representative. People need to have advocates on their behalf, and that is largely a role that we all have as public representatives. I would not like to see the organisation writing back to the person who is making the representation on the basis of the length of time he or she spent in an institution saying that the organisation will not speak to Deputy Sherlock on the matter and he has nothing to do with it. The system and culture of the organisation must be ones of interfacing with the public and must recognise us as public representatives acting on behalf of people. This is where I am coming from - I should have been clearer about it.