Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am utterly opposed to section 7. I consider it to be an entirely empty, vacuous, meaningless part of this flawed legislation.

As many Deputies have stated already, what is proposed in the Irish Water public water forum is nothing more or less than a talking shop. Essentially, it has no power, and the various elements referred to in section 7(5), which are supposed to be the functions of this water forum, are vague and toothless, to say the least. They include representing interests, making comments and making suggestions. They are the only functions that are supposed to be ascribed to this meaningless body.

This is an ineffectual and pathetic ploy, a tokenistic gesture to try to assuage the concerns expressed in all corners of the country in recent months about Irish Water. It is an exercise in optics. It is to give the impression that the Government wants to listen to people, hear their concerns and act on them, but there is nothing in this section that obliges the Minister or the Government to act at all. It does not even oblige it to take into account or to listen to the recommendations and, primarily, the comments. The primary purpose of this forum is to provide comment but there is no obligation on the Minister or the Government to do anything about that comment.

I said earlier that if this is to be a new modus operandifor a national utility, why not have a public forum for the ESB, Bord Gáis and all the other utilities? It is meaningless nonsense. There is nothing to say that the Government should not be establishing various talking shops to accompany any range of quangos and semi-State agencies it chooses. It is absolute nonsense and I do not believe anybody on the Government benches considers this to be a serious proposal to address the incompetence, mismanagement and waste we have seen in Irish Water in recent months. It does nothing to address that. It is nothing but an exercise in optical illusion.

The Minister for Irish Water is accountable to this Dáil. Article 28.4.1^oof Bunreacht na hÉireann states that the Government shall be responsible to the Dáil. This is the Chamber where the people are represented. This is the democratic forum for the Minister sitting opposite, who is the Minister for Irish Water, to be accountable and answerable. This is the Chamber, but the problem is that this Government has repeatedly ignored, bullied and sidelined it and the elected representatives of the people. Nothing but contempt has been demonstrated for the Members of this House and, by extension, the 4.5 million people who elected them in 2011. We saw it on 18 December 2013 when the then Minister, former Deputy Phil Hogan, rammed the Irish Water legislation through this House, shut down debate and refused to accept amendments. We have seen it over the course of the past 12 months when Deputies raised concerns with Irish Water, when the issue of bonuses arose earlier in the year, and when people tried to highlight the fact that secret deals had been done with trade unions to shore up the support of the unions for Irish Water through secretive deals, which were initiated by the then Minister. All of that has been raised in this House and all of it has been batted away, yet we are supposed to believe that the Minister will take heed of some non-binding forum, with no powers and no real statutory authority, while at the same time showing total and utter contempt for this Chamber. It is just not credible that this so-called public water forum will be anything other than a stitch-up, a talking shop and a so-called panacea for the public outrage that has been demonstrated in recent months. As other Deputies have said, it is a joke. It is an affront to our democracy and an affront to our citizens.

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