Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tairgim: "Go léifear an Bille an Dara hUair anois."

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I want to begin by thanking all of the parties, groups and independent Deputies that have indicated their support for this Bill advocating a referendum on the public ownership and management of our water, the Thirty Fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) (No.2) Bill 2016. The Bill specifically states:

The Government shall be collectively responsible for the protection, management and maintenance of the public water system. The Government shall ensure in the public interest that this resource remains in public ownership and management.

I am also pleased that the Government has decided not to oppose the Bill and has allowed it to proceed to Committee Stage without a vote, although it is important to say that such a vote would have been comfortably carried.

This Bill, which was drafted in conjunction with the Right2Water campaign, does not belong to me or to any other politician or political party. It belongs to people in communities across Ireland, as does the water it protects. The Bill’s progress thus far is a reflection of the power of a movement, the largest in the history of the State, and one in which many of us in this House have had the privilege to participate. At the same time, there were many here who simply did not get the message of Right2Water, who did not understand its significance or the scale of its support. The Right2Water campaign was about much more than water charges. It was a movement against austerity and the politics that underpinned it and it showed that everyday people can change society when they get active and organised. First and foremost it was a mass movement by ordinary citizens against what they correctly saw as the first steps towards the privatisation of water services.

The amendment proposed in this Bill gives voice to that central demand, that our water services should remain in public ownership and, I stress, public management. The latter is a very important part of the Bill. It was drafted by Treasa Brannick O’Cillin with the assistance of senior counsel, Séamas Ó Tuathail. It places responsibility on this or any future Government to ensure that both the ownership and management of our water remains in public hands. Placing the amendment in Article 28 of the Constitution gives a guarantee to the citizens of this State that the public water system will not be privatised. This is the proper place for the amendment, alongside areas such as health care and education, befitting of the importance of water to life and society.

I must make clear that this amendment does not deal with group water schemes. By specifying the public water system as its concern, it does not seek to bring citizens’ private water schemes, or systems built for private use within the remit of the Government. Furthermore, the amendment does not intervene into the legislative framework. It does not seek to abolish water charges or Irish Water. Although I maintain my opposition to both, that is a battle for another day following the report by the expert commission. The amendment will, however, guarantee that the Irish Government is responsible for our water and its management, from the bodies of water connected to the provision of public water, to all systems from collection to distribution, including waste water systems. If it is passed, these will be the sole responsibility of the Irish Government. No Government can sell them off or pass on the management to for-profit companies. This will be a victory for everyone in this country who believes that water is a human right and not a commodity. This amendment will also be a blow against privatisation. In England and Wales today, because of the privatisation of water, 23.6% of people live in a state of water poverty. Private water bills have sky-rocketed by more than 300% since the system was privatised while 19 private water companies make annual profits in excess of £2 billion. This situation must not be repeated in Ireland.

Ireland has had its share of nightmare privatisation experiences. We have an unprecedented homelessness crisis in this State today which is directly attributable to the selling off of public housing stock and the turning over of housing, lock, stock and barrel, to the market. Then there is the case of refuse services, privatised after a similar attempt to introduce charges, which has resulted in sky-high rates, bad wages and conditions for workers, a lockout and increases in illegal dumping. All of this is before we get to the case of Telecom Eireann and Eircom, where an essential public asset was sold off at a cut-rate price. Our telecommunications system was starved of investment, leaving the public lacking in the infrastructure needed to build a modern economy.

This is not the only damage done by privatisation. It has also played a key role in corroding the public sphere, the ties that bind us together in society. Given recent events in America there will be a lot of discussion in the coming days about the crisis of democracy and why people are so angry. It would be a mistake to have that conversation without talking about what has changed so fundamentally in our economies in recent years. It is not only the fact that people’s jobs, wages and services have been cut, but also the philosophy that underpins this, namely, the belief that the market is the best way to produce and distribute goods. This philosophy has been used to shrink the terrain of public goods in our economies. This is an attack on democracy because when smaller and smaller proportions of the economy can be owned in common, fewer and fewer decisions can be made in common. The people are disempowered. We need to respond to this with a defence of the common, the part of society that we, the public, own and share.

Water provision is at the forefront of this battle.

Being realistic, I understand there are likely to be attempts to dilute the wording of the Bill on Committee Stage. The best defence against this is maintaining the vigilance of and the pressure exerted by the Right2Water movement which have secured the passage of the Bill to this Stage. The movement comprises everyday activists and trade unions such as Unite, Mandate, the CPSU, OPATSI, the TWU and my own, the CWU. I was very pleased when we received support for the Bill from the country's largest trade union, SIPTU. To Members of this House and the Seanad, all I will say is there is only one thing they need to believe, that is, the public water system should remain within public protection, ownership and management and should not be sold off to private enterprise for the pursuit of profit. If they can agree with this idea, we call on them to support the Bill as it stands without making any change to it.

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