Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his opening statement. I thank Deputy Joan Collins who initially requested the debate, primarily to give us an opportunity in the Dáil to discuss the conclusions and outworking of the negotiations between water services workers, Irish Water, the County and City Management Association, CCMA, and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on the future delivery of domestic water services. Before I make my remarks specifically on this issue, I acknowledge that the Minister of State discussed a wider range of issues. I will not address them today. It is not because they are not equally important. We have dealt with many of them, including water quality in particular and the recent EPA reports, in the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage and I am sure we will return to the Shannon pipeline project in the near future. My focus will be on the future delivery of domestic water and wastewater services on the other side of the WRC negotiations.

I always preface my remarks in these discussions by saying that Sinn Féin's approach to these matters has been shaped by our involvement in the Right to Water movement. We believe people have a right to access good quality drinking water and wastewater on the basis of need and not on the basis of ability to pay and that they should be delivered through the highest quality public service that is attainable. We have also long argued for holding a referendum to enshrine the public ownership of our water services and we look forward to further developments on this front later this year.

When the then Minister, Eoghan Murphy, announced the decision to bring forward the end of the service level agreement between workers and their employers at the creation of Irish Water in 2018 Sinn Féin made it very clear we would not get involved in or interfere with industrial relations matters. They were matters for workers and their trade union representatives, their employers and the Government. Given the huge importance of domestic water and wastewater and the significant political controversies we had under a previous Government, we felt it was right and proper for the Oireachtas housing committee and the Dáil to keep track of the public policy elements of the negotiations. They are matters that affect not only the employers and the workers but the wider public and, therefore, the Oireachtas needs to be involved in them.

We set out very clearly a set of views we had that if the Government was to move in partnership with workers and unions towards the creation of a single utility, a number of conditions had to be met. First and foremost was that any move to end the service level agreement would have to be voluntary. There could be no compulsory redundancies. I welcome the fact that from the outset of the process, the then Minister, Eoghan Murphy, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, made clear that this would be the case. I want to acknowledge, however, that from speaking to water services workers, there continues to be concern that while the agreement in principle sets out that if people remain in local authorities they will retain their existing terms and conditions, these will only be their core terms and conditions and not any additional terms or benefits they have accrued from acting up or taking on additional roles and responsibilities. I said to the Minister of State on the previous occasion we discussed this, and I will say it again, that the Government should clarify, and it would be helpful if it reaffirmed this, that workers who opt to stay with the local authority will retain the full terms and conditions they enjoy at present, despite the fact they may be redeployed from water services to other areas of activity. The sooner this is clarified, the better.

Another issue for us is public ownership. We believe it would be of enormous benefit for the Government to set the date for the referendum. I welcome the fact that SIPTU, Fórsa, Unite and other trade unions recently launched a very important campaign urging the Government to set the date for the referendum. This could be one of those very valuable opportunities whereby we could have a very good public debate on why water as a utility is different from other utilities. It is so fundamental to human well-being and community life that the idea of it being a public good in public ownership protected by the Constitution makes eminent sense. I press the Minister of State to urge his colleague to say a little more about the timelines for the referendum because it is of particular importance to us and water services workers and their families.

One of the big challenges and concerns many of us have with the move towards a single utility is the impact of the transfer of water services fully from local authorities to Irish Water Uisce Éireann, as it will be formally known once the legislation passes through the Houses. We have seen a hollowing out of services delivered directly by local authorities over the years. Housing by and large is no longer primarily delivered through local authorities. It is primarily achieved through purchased turnkey properties or Part 5. Direct labour crews for maintenance have been run down in preference to contracted work. Waste management is no longer with local authorities. While the service level agreement means that workers continue to be employed by the local authority, albeit under the direction of Irish Water, if this process is completed, that will no longer be the case. This creates a real problem because local authorities are best at providing good quality services to local communities.

No matter what the final configuration of the single utility, it must continue to have footprint in our local authorities. There are depots, offices and connections between communities and long-standing water services workers that are better located, irrespective of who the employer is, inside the infrastructure of the local authority. Also from a planning and housing point of view, it makes much more sense if the housing department, the planning department and the water services department, even if it is an Irish Water controlled water services department, are all co-located in one building. We see this with some aspects of our mental health services whereby HSE staff and local authority staff work in the same building. Therefore, the continued physical presence of water services workers in the infrastructure of local authorities is key. I encourage the Minister of State to give us more information on all of this in further remarks.

Concern has been expressed about the final legal status of the new utility. The Minister has, as per the outworkings of the WRC negotiations, restated the commitment to public ownership but, of course, this can take many different forms, as the Minister of State knows. In addition to the issue of the terms and conditions of the workers who may opt to transfer to Uisce Éireann, there is also the issue of those workers who will be employed at a future point in time. This is particularly relevant because local authorities are not honouring the existing WRC service level agreement on the replacement of existing staff. Local authorities are assuming it can be dealt with by Irish Water at a later stage. What are the guarantees as regards terms and conditions for these future workers? Will they have the same full level of protection that they would get if they were covered by public sector pay agreements?

Clearly this is a debate of enormous public importance for the terms and conditions of the workers, their families and their communities, the final configuration of the service in terms of its relationship with local authorities and the final legal status. Some of these are not clear from the remarks of the Minister of State, previous debates on this or the second document that has emerged but has yet to be formally published, although it is in widespread circulation, on foot of the WRC talks. The point I really want to emphasise is as follows. There is still a lot of concern about the future delivery of water services. There is still a lot of legacy mistrust arising from some of the policy decisions enacted or attempted to be enacted by previous Governments. The Government would be doing itself an enormous favour, as well as doing our water services and the State an enormous favour, if it set a date and said it was committed to holding a referendum and intends to bring forward legislation at a certain point in time.

I fully accept it would make much more sense to hold two referendums on the same day. I would be more than happy to spend a considerable amount of my time campaigning for enshrining in the Constitution the right to housing and public ownership of our water services. Our understanding is that the commission on housing will report back to the Government very soon. We are very hopeful that it will recommend that the Government proceed to enshrine the right to housing in the Constitution. If it does so in the timeline it set out, which is November, I would like to see the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, bring the memorandum referenced by the Minister of State to Cabinet this year. Many of us have a real concern that while Fianna Fáil's position on referendums on the right to housing and water has shifted somewhat, Fine Gael is still implacably opposed to both.

We do not and will not know that until the memorandum on the two referendums is brought forward. The worry, however, is that the memo may come after the rotation of Taoiseach. I am not sure whether the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, will be as amenable to the eminently sensible suggestions made by the trade unions, the housing commission, Sinn Féin and some members of Fianna Fáil. For this reason, we need to set the date and hold not one but two referendums. We need to ensure, as the Minister of State said, that we have a world-class public water service providing the highest quality drinking water to communities, families and businesses, that we undo decades of neglect and underinvestment and, crucially, that it is publicly owned so that people will forever more have access to water and wastewater services free at the point of delivery based on need and not on ability to pay.

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