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

The Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) (No. 2) Bill 2016 was put on hold on Committee Stage last March to provide the Minister with two months to engage with me on issues of wording and an amendment from his Department relating to his concern about the unintended consequences of keeping water in public ownership. Nearly a year on and we are still waiting. The Minister met me once with two of my colleagues and a second time to show me a piece of paper with a wording that he believed might work, but there has been no real engagement. I have offered for my legal team to meet his legal team or the Attorney General's legal team to try to tease this out, but that has not happened. This morning, the committee agreed to continue Committee Stage of my Bill in April, and I hope that the Minister will be able to say when he will engage with me as its sponsor in a meaningful way.

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