Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that water is the new gold. We have the prospect on a global scale of super profits being realisedon the back of what is a necessity to sustain life. Anybody who glances even superficially at what the Government has done in the establishment of Irish Water could come to no other conclusion but that Irish Water is the precursor to an organisation or institution to privatise the water supply because anything else does not make sense. Why, in God's name, would anyone bother, given the lack of economies of scale, installing individual water meters unless they had a plan to define the source of supply in order that they could charge for it and, ultimately, privatise the service? The prospect of our vital life-sustaining water supply being handed over to private hands is very real. In that sense, the idea of constitutional change to protect the water supply and maintain it in public ownership is critically important. If we were to do this, we would find ourselves very much on the side of people globally who have had to engage in battles similar to those engaged in by the Irish population to protect water.

The reality is that on the issue of water privatisation globally the tide had turned precisely at the time when we in Ireland were moving in the opposite direction. Many cities are returning water services to public control. We know that a report by the Transnational Institute-Public Services International research unit and the Multinationals Observatory suggests 180 cities and communities in 35 countries, including in places such as Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Paris, Berlin and Kuala Lumpur, have re-municipalised their water systems in the past decade. We know that the European Federation of Public Service Unions found clear signs that municipalities in a number of countries across Europe were continuing to move towards re-municipalising rather than privatising water services. We know that services in the United Kingdom are being brought back in-house because outsourcing has proved to be inefficient. The Financial Timessuggested local authorities had grown sceptical about the savings outsourcing could deliver, as well as fearing a backlash against private companies which were making large profits from taxpayers.

If the Minister and his colleague could tone it down it a bit, it would be helpful; it is hard to speak here at the same time.

By 2011, some 80 out of 140 councils in the UK had brought back local services on the expiry of private contracts. This has been driven by an economic failure of the private model. The reduction in costs and greater efficiency of in-house services has been a major factor in taking many of these services back into public ownership.

While I do not have time to develop the points, it is commonly known that Corporate Watch in the UK investigated the finances of 19 water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, and found that about a third of the money spent on water bills goes to banks and investors as dividends. People pay £2 billion more per year or £80 per household than they would if water services were publicly owned. Six companies are avoiding billions of pounds in taxes by routing profits through tax havens. We know that the CEOs of 19 water companies in England and Wales were paid about £10 million in salaries and bonuses.

Basically privatisation is a bad model for public services, critically for life-sustaining ones such as water; that has been demonstrated the world over. It has wreaked havoc everywhere and it results in increased charges, lack of public accountability, higher operating costs, worse services, and a loss in jobs in the water industry, not to mind a deteriorating infrastructure at precisely the time when our infrastructure needs to be developed. Any cursory examination of any of the areas where water has been privatised would vindicate that.

There are no market-based solutions to the crisis of water services and no market-based solutions to climate change or environmental crisis. In fact, if we want to protect our water we need to ensure the market is excluded from its provision. It is not just a case of the Bill enshrining water in public ownership, but the management of our water supply must be maintained in public ownership through local authorities and State bodies, and not outsourced to organisations such as Capita, as we have seen in the UK. The enshrining of the management as well as the ownership of our water supply publicly are equally important.

I believe the people have spoken on this. They have a deep desire to keep our water supply in public ownership. We are an island nation that gets a lot of rain. We know it costs money to deliver our water, but it is a public service that should be available to all based on need and not on the money in individuals' pockets at the end of the day.

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