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

I am sure like the rest of us the Taoiseach remembers Phil Hogan, who long before he went to Europe and long before "golfgate", was in charge of water services. At the time, as well as threatening the population that he would turn their water down to a trickle if they did not pay water charges, he also did a deal with all 3,200 of those who worked in the water services so that they would co-operate with the establishment of Irish Water by working to a service level agreement, SLA, that was legally binding until 2024. Now we find that service level agreement is being chivvied along by none other than Irish Water itself, which wants to move the council workers over sooner than 2024. In a reply to a question recently from Deputy Boyd Barrett, the Minister said that he was asking the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to facilitate negotiations for the move to Irish Water.

We must be clear in this House that the workers in Irish Water who co-operated with the establishment of Irish Water, but who did not co-operate with the attempt to push meters on the population, will not be bullied or coerced into getting rid of their service level agreement. They see themselves as public sector workers with stable employment and that is the way many of them want to remain. SIPTU employees have voted by 98% to go on strike if there is any attempt to get rid of their SLA before 2024. I want the Taoiseach to answer a question this morning. Can we have a commitment in this House that the promised referendum on the guarantee in the Constitution that water will remain in public ownership will be conducted? In 2017 the committee set up in this House to get over a row at the time between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael recommended that such a referendum would go ahead. Deputy Joan Collins introduced a Bill that was signed by practically all the Opposition at the time to have such a referendum. The Government has sat on that and now it is prepared to go to war with the workers and to push them into this utility.

The Government may have made a commitment in the programme for Government that Irish Water would remain as a public service, but we have all seen the road that single utilities go down. The same happened with TEAM Aer Lingus and with other utilities in this country. The workers are not guaranteed that they will remain public sector workers in a publicly controlled utility. We need to give them that guarantee and the best way of doing it is for the Government to commit to having a referendum, as was fought for by the tens of thousands of people the length and breadth of the country who resisted water charges and who dragged Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael into changing their position on water charges because they were afraid of the movement from below and those people who stood with the workers to say they would not allow the water services to be privatised. We need that referendum and we need an answer from the Government on when we can have it.

See this speech in context