Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to make a few points on the Bill. I welcome the legislation and commend those who brought it forward. Notwithstanding the Water Services Acts in place and the safeguards they provide, there is distrust among the public about issues such as the ownership of Irish water and other aspects of public property. Anything we can do to facilitate this is welcome. My colleague mentioned the cost of referendums. I was on the Oireachtas commission at the time of the referendum on the Seanad and I recall a figure of approximately €13 million being discussed as the cost of the referendum. The practice of recent years, given the number of referenda we have, is to pool together certain issues. Deputy Madigan has proposals on divorce she wishes to put forward, and if the legislation on those was passed it would require a referendum and there may be others also. These could be pooled to reduce the cost.

It is not lost on me that the Government, while accepting Second Stage, is facing the reality that it would have lost tonight because we support the Bill. It would also have lost on the amendment tabled last week on Deputy Tony McLoughlin's Bill on fracking. Rather than lose it has chosen to accept Second Stage, with very carefully used language which provides for a potential attempt by the Government to amend the Bill at pre-legislative scrutiny stage or on Committee Stage. With regard to the spirit of introducing pre-legislative scrutiny as a stage in the process, it worries me that it is to undermine the independence of Parliament in trying to bring forward legislation or legislative change. This would be wrong. While there might be very many negatives in some people's eyes regarding the make-up of the current Parliament it has served to give Parliament a little more of an input to the running of the country. In the past, no matter who was in Government, Parliament was merely subservient to the Cabinet of the day but now, because of our numerical situation, it is a little different. I hope that pre-legislative scrutiny will not be abused in a way to undermine the will of the House and the will of the sum of parts of the 158 Members of the House rather than the will of officials and Cabinet Ministers of the day, because this would be very much a retrograde step.

I support the public ownership of our water system. While I appreciate that my colleague, Deputy Cowen, does not want to see forestry and other aspects been pulled in under this, it certainly would not be the intention. Speaking personally, I feel that if we wanted to go back as far as the hydrocarbon legislation which governs our approach to natural resources offshore, we could very usefully revisit this entire area in terms of how we go about realising the value of these resources and their ownership, in terms of us licensing them out and others taking the spoils with additional taxation measures being the only revenue to us. This is something we could revisit.

I would not rule out dealing with the issue of ownership of our forestry and various other resources of the State, speaking from a personal perspective. The parties will have their own positions on this but it is worth looking at these aspects. We all remember what was an opportunity for everybody in Ireland to benefit from the markets with the much promoted flotation of Eircom or Telecom Éireann, or whatever its then name was. Many of us participated in it. With the benefit of hindsight we see the flaws in doing this. We see the disaster it has become and the fact that as a nation which never had a full suite of infrastructure in terms of the utilities to which people are entitled. As things now stand, effectively the people are at the mercy of commercial entities which may or may not decide to provide infrastructure, technology or whatever in a particular area. This is something of which we need to be cognisant.

When governments or states are involved in commercial entities there may at times be an argument to look at public private partnerships or part flotations, but when it comes to key utilities and key natural resources the public is entitled to full and guaranteed ownership of all of these. As a result, I am very supportive of any such measures and I am happy to support the Bill before us this evening.

The cost issue was rightly pointed out by my colleague Deputy Cowen. We could be prudent on this. Following whatever improvements can be made to strengthen the Bill and strengthen the assurance to the members of the public that it is theirs and it can never be taken off them, if a referendum is the outcome it would be positive. Perhaps it could be pooled with some of the other legislative proposals already before the House or about to come before the House so we could consult the people on a number of issues at the same time, thus reducing the cost.

I hope, notwithstanding the Minister's kind words in support of the spirit of the Bill, the pre-legislative scrutiny stage will not be abused in favour of forcing a Government position and will honour the spirit and intentions of the Members of the House who support this today and ensure that ultimately we will see the absolute copper fastening of the public ownership of the utility.

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