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

I wish to thank the Regional Group for putting forward this motion. We need to go back a few years to the major row that occurred in this country between the Government and the population over water charges. What came out of that was a vote in this Chamber in 2017 which fudged the whole issue. The main fudging was in respect of the question of public ownership of water utilities.

There is a Bill before the House to provide for a referendum on the public ownership of water to avoid, forever, the possibility of the privatisation of water services, but that has been left sitting on a shelf.

Here is the root of a big mistake by the Government. After a major campaign to defeat water charges and the election to this House of a number of Deputies, including myself, by the communities we represented during that campaign, the Government just let it sit. Now, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage wants to rush through the ending of service level agreements for workers, which were guaranteed until 2025. He wants to end them by the beginning of next year and transfer all local authority workers to Irish Water as a single utility. It is not going to happen. I have never seen as much sentiment in resistance to being forcibly moved from a public sector job to a private utility. I will quote the workers at the recent Fórsa conference: "If workers are forced to transfer to Irish Water against their will, their anger and alienation will create a failed entity, a mortally-wounded service, and a public policy debacle to dwarf previous protests over water charges".

That follows hot on the heels of an OECD report, which states that the Government has to consider the reintroduction of water charges. Interestingly, the same OECD report also recommended, with regard to the environment, that the Government set a specific target to reduce biomethane associated with the size of the livestock herd in this country. That is not mentioned at all. All the Government mentions is the reintroduction of water charges because, yet again, it wants to make ordinary people pay through the nose so it can privatise this utility. Therein lies the problem. There is a tension between outsourcing to private entities the work that must be done on waste water and the provision of water services throughout the country and running it through the local authorities. The local authorities have been stripped of their power and their funding. To give Members an idea of what that means, the EU average spend on local authority funding is 22% of government budgets, while in Ireland it is 8%. They should think about that the next time they see smelly water running down the streets of Arklow, Cahersiveen or anywhere else. It is deliberately underfunding the local authorities in order to privatise.

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