Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I acknowledge that, since the Bill was published, we have made considerable progress in limiting the potential for the privatisation of water services. It is certainly the case that, when the Bill was originally published, provisions in it expressly allowed for the privatisation of water. The original section 27, which I believe has now gone, referred to that. The same is to some extent true of section 28. The Bill was peppered with provisions whereby the Minister could, by order, effectively transfer the functions and responsibilities of water service authorities to others, who could include commercial companies.

I accept that, in the course of the debate on Committee Stage, the Minister agreed to the introduction of the democratic accountability provision and that he has put an amendment before us on Report Stage that protects against the transfer of assets and infrastructure that is in the ownership of the local authority. However, I am still unclear about what happens in a DBO situation. For example, if a new water treatment or sewerage plant is being built, the local authority advertises. There is no existing plant and a new one is being built. Whose asset is that? Who owns the infrastructure? One has an asset not originally in the ownership of the local authority so what happens to it?

I am also concerned about the de facto situation. While I acknowledge that provision has been made for democratic accountability in the DBO scenario, the de facto case is that, where one has a DBO set-up, control of the facility and the service will rest in the hands of a private company. The Minister may say that, in theory, the asset is owned by the local authority and that it will all return to it in 25 years. In practice, however, it is——

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