Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I may as well say that before I came into this House I worked as a water services caretaker for Donegal County Council for 16 years. Unfortunately, in spite of the positive words that have been said about caretakers in the debate tonight, that is going to be lost under the Bill because that system is gone and will be gone through Irish Water as well. I do not believe that anybody can tell me that will not be the case. Sadly, that is the reality of the situation. There is no doubt that local staff knew the situation on the ground and worked their best and hardest to make a bad system that existed under the local authorities work. They could contribute more and have an easier time of it if the system was run properly but that will not happen now. I will get to it later on, but what Irish Water staff will be doing in the future is managing private contractors and that is probably all they will be doing.

I wish to explicitly state that in the context of the effort to update outdated systems, I am completely against the Government's numerous attempts to take power away from local authorities and its continuous moves towards outsourcing and privatisation of our water supply. In terms of resources, there is absolutely no difference between what is needed now and what was needed before Irish Water was created, except that Irish Water packaged it differently and presented it on a national basis. There probably was a commitment to publish and fund more by the Government to make it look like Irish Water was some sort of dynamic company that was solving all of our water problems that were never highlighted before, which it actually was not doing.

The Bill before the House states that the aim of the legislation is to supposedly create a national publicly owned regulated water services utility under Uisce Éireann. I am aware that this legislation provides for the separation of Irish Water from the Ervia group but does not contain provisions in respect of the parallel Irish Water transformation process involving the transfer of local authority staff to Irish Water. The ongoing disputes between Irish Water and council staff have significant relevance in this context, however. We know that workers from the 31 local authorities do not want to work directly for Irish Water and were against the phasing out of the current system of service level agreements. This move to rename and make Uisce Éireann is a way to get the workers to accept the change and buy into it but Uisce Éireann will continue to use contractors to supply and run our water infrastructure. When the workers all agree to move to Uisce Éireann, we will see the phasing out of direct employment other than managers managing the contracts of private water workers. That is the reality of what will happen, sadly, because the days of local people who actually know their local areas being involved in water services and responsible for them are gone. In a huge number of cases they went the extra mile to ensure the water services would survive and be able to manage and work in the area. The day I started on Donegal County Council, the local engineer came down to meet me. He told me that although I might think the job should not be a vocation, it would become a vocation. I laughed at him and told him I was not looking for a vocation; I was looking for a job that would pay me a wage at the end of the week. What actually happens, however, is that because you are left with sole responsibility for this network and looking after water - providing water for all your neighbours. You go the extra mile to make sure you can do it. You end up working night and day and Sundays and everything like that to make sure it actually works for your neighbours and friends and community. That will be lost in the system.

I understand the staff in the council water services have not been given an opportunity to have their say on this legislation. That should be done first, before even bringing the legislation to this House. It seems that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is to nominate one director but it will have to allow the Minister to choose between at least two candidates. Why should the Minister get to pick who will be the representative of the workers? As citizens of Ireland, this is our water and we are all invested in it, yet the Minister gets to pick those whom he wants for the board. Surely there should be a public interest representation on the board as well. We can add to the above that we saw how out of touch previous Ministers were on this. That was obvious in 2014, 2015 and 2016 when Phil Hogan, Alan Kelly and Simon Coveney all did the exact opposite of what the public wanted. Experience has shown us that the Irish people cannot trust politicians to act in their interests.

There is always the possibility of something that should be inextricably linked to this legislation, that is, a referendum on the future of water. I have been speaking to water activists from all over the country, including those involved in the right to water protests, and we are all aware that water is still among the most profitable non-financial assets on the planet. The Government and major multinationals are also aware of that - probably more so than the community. That is why there was a rush to privatise water. Whether it is admitted or not, there is an appetite to privatise our water system.

There is talk about why we want to have it in the Constitution and why it should be in the Constitution. A very interesting aside is that when Portugal went into a bailout the Troika could not touch the housing system in Portugal because in the Portuguese constitution housing was a protected right of citizens. What did the Troika do here? With the active participation of Fine Gael and everybody else they destroyed the housing system and look at the mess we are in today. That is why it is vitally important that Irish Water is properly protected in the Irish Constitution to ensure that it will not be privatised by the Government or anybody else in the future.

The water activists and the water workers have two major concerns in regard to the referendum. First, what is the wording of the referendum? It has been six years since the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) Bill 2016 was put forward by Deputy Joan Collins and unanimously passed in this House. We still do not have sight of a wording for a constitutional amendment. Talk about undermining the democratic wishes of the nation and the democratic structures of the State. We do not want simply to enshrine Irish Water or Uisce Éireann in the Constitution. We need to ensure that the following wording is used: "The Government shall be collectively responsible for the protection, management and maintenance of the public water system. The Government shall ensure in the public interests that this resource remains in public ownership and management." Anything less will allow privatisation through the back door. Second, we will need to make sure that the amendment is placed in Article 28, section 4(2)(i) rather than, if we even have an amendment, the Government will intend it to be in the section of the Constitution which means that the courts will have to decide. We want to place it in the right section of the Constitution where our human right to water is in conflict with the ownership of our water system by some Irish oligarch or international vulture fund and some Supreme Court judge decides whose right is sacrosanct. We need the amendment placed in the governance section of the Constitution.

Now water workers and water activists across the country are watching to make sure that this is not a symbolic or tokenistic measure. Only a meaningful referendum to protect our water system will be satisfactory. That is vitally important. I know for a fact that the Government will not come up with this meaningful referendum, if it comes up with a referendum at all. Yesterday the Taoiseach was answering questions on this during Leaders' Questions. He actually said that we did not need a referendum, that the Government was doing everything to protect water. If that is the case we are in big trouble because sadly this Government will not protect water. That is why it has to be in their founding document, in the Constitution, and in the right section of the Constitution. I have no doubt that the intention of this Government and previous Governments will be not to have it in that section because that will restrict them in what they actually do. It will restrict them privatising and selling it off. Have we not learned from what happened with Eircom? We should learn from those mistakes. This is vital public infrastructure and it has to stay in public ownership; that is the reality of the situation.

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