Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is very important to the Government. Commitments were made and I intend to honour them. It is not, however, as urgent as other things because there is not currently a risk to the public ownership of our water supplies. We are committed to bringing forward a referendum to ensure our water services remain in public ownership. The difficulty has been in finding language that mitigates the risks identified regarding group water schemes, private wells and Irish Water. Many attempts have been made to find the appropriate draft language.

It took some months to do that, longer than I thought. I have also met with the unions on a number of occasions and shared those 14 tests, and I can share them with Deputy O'Brien as well. When I met in March with a number of people on this issue, I expected that other proposals and other ideas for language and wording that would have cross-party support in this House would come forward. They did not, however. Some very smart people are trying to work out a solution to this issue and we now have Government approval on proposed wording. I brought that proposed wording to the Office of the Attorney General in November and he is working on that.

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