Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have a series of questions about what is really going on with the back door to this place in terms of Irish Water. On 16 November, staff who were seconded to Irish Water from local authorities received a letter from Irish Water management stating that the service level agreement under which they work, which is due to expire in 2025, will be renegotiated and all negotiations concluded by the end of February 2019. This is the result of a report commissioned by the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, in May 2018 when he asked the Workplace Relations Commission to review the service level agreement, consult all sides and produce a report on the matter. The report was submitted to the Minister in September. All of the bodies that contributed to the report, namely, the Local Government Management Agency, the relevant trade union, the Workplace Relations Commission and the Irish Water utility, acknowledged that the arrangement of seconding to Irish Water workers who had spent their working lives employed in local authority water services has been brilliant. The experience, skills and depth of knowledge they brought to Irish Water was found to be indispensable and very much welcomed by the utility. When one reads the report, one finds that all the relevant bodies share this view.

The problem is that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government is rushing to change the service level agreement, which is supposed to last until 2025. He wants to change it in 2021 and wants the negotiations on same ended by February 2019, which is three months away. I have noted the co-ordination in this campaign. The report was published in September and shortly afterwards, a report is published setting out excess charges that will be implemented in 2020 and how much income they will generate. Shortly after that, the Environmental Protection Agency produced a report showing that local private water utilities are poisoning people because they are not delivering a proper service. We the get reports that the Government proposes to undermine a Bill introduced by Deputy Joan Collins and supported by many parties providing for a referendum to prohibit the privatisation of Irish Water. It will do so by amending the Bill to allow for an element of privatisation known as public private partnership, PPP. What will happen to the jobs of Irish Water workers who do not want to transfer to a utility that may privatise water in the future? Will the Government get over itself and, once and for all, tell people that water will remain in public hands and will never be privatised? It must make that clear because the messages are extremely confusing and extraordinarily worrying for communities and, in particular, the workers in question.

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