Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy McDonald has indicated, Members received the report of the commission on water last evening. The very first recommendation of the expert commission concerns the public ownership of the water infrastructure.

It states that as part of the overall approach to settling the issue addressed in the report, the expert commission recommends that the adoption of a suitable constitutional provision on public ownership of water services be more fully addressed by the Oireachtas committee as part of its deliberations. The Dáil has already passed a Bill on Second Stage to achieve this objective. We are told that the Government was briefed this week on the complexities that would arise if water was the only utility network given constitutional protection. The Labour Party has published a referendum Bill that protects all our networks, including gas and electricity. It avoids a repetition of the disaster of the sale of the telecommunications network some years ago.

Whether those of us in the House like it, there is a real distrust of politicians on this issue. There is a real fear that whatever laws we pass – the Minister has indicated that we have already enacted laws to protect it as a public utility – we need to go beyond that now to reassure people and to assuage real fears. While the detail will be addressed more fully by the committee, as the Minister has said, the report makes clear that the principle of public ownership must be enshrined in the Constitution. Yesterday, before the report was even published, we saw reports of Cabinet briefings against a referendum.

Will the Government support the idea of a referendum to keep our water infrastructure in public ownership? A Bill has already passed the House to that effect. If so, will the Government give a guarantee to the House that the resulting referendum will take place during 2017? Will the Government publish and provide to the committee now established the briefings and advices given to it in respect of such a referendum in order that the committee can carry out its work properly informed?

See this speech in context