Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I assure the Deputy I incline more to his view than that of the World Bank. However, I would emphasise that the World Bank has changed its approach to the privatisation of water and water utilities in African countries. That change of heart, while not expressed overtly, has occurred since early 2005. We do not incline to the World Bank definition. We are co-sponsoring a draft resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, requesting the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take forward a study on the scope and content of the relevant human rights obligations related to access to water under international human rights instruments.

We are very much active in trying to guarantee that this right and obligation becomes precisely that, an obligation on domestic countries. As the Deputy rightly stated — that is the important aspect to remember from a legal point of view about General Comment No. 15 — that it is primarily applicable in the domestic sense. We cannot extend this right in an extra-territorial sense. We must work with governments in our partner countries and fund them to ensure they can roll out and extend this particular obligation vis-À-vis their own citizens.

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