Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Before I talk about the importance of a referendum, setting a date for it and the need for us strongly to oppose any possibility of privatisation of our water and wastewater infrastructure, I support the comments by my constituency colleague, Deputy Mitchell, regarding the problems for people moving into homes because of delays in water connections. It is completely and utterly unacceptable.

Regarding lead pipes, we have a public health situation in which people's health is being seriously affected. The programme in place to rectify this issue is moving so slowly that it will not address the problem for many people for many decades to come. It is utterly unacceptable. The volume of information available to people with leads pipes in their homes is not acceptable. The line from Irish Water is that if homeowners replace the pipes on their side, it will replace them on its side. I know of numerous instances where people do not have lead pipes on their side but there are lead pipes outside their homes and they are not being replaced. I am aware of a case in which Irish Water has replaced lead pipes on half a road in an estate in which all the houses were built at the same time. Half the pipes were replaced and then Irish Water told the remaining householders that it is not sure whether there are lead pipes in the area. This is an estate built 100 years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, lead pipes were used for the entire estate. All of that creates worry and anxiety for communities and it really is not acceptable.

Before I deal with the substantive point about the need for a referendum and a date for it, I refer to the value that workers in water services give by way of the work they do. I saw that at first-hand when I was a member of a local authority. The knowledge and expertise these workers have built up of the water network in their areas is second to none. That should be to the forefront of the minds of members of the Government as they delay the holding of a referendum. One of the ways the Government could support and value those workers properly, as they should be supported, is by naming a date now for a referendum.

We in the Social Democrats fully support the trade union campaign to name a date. I tabled an amendment on Committee Stage of the Water Services (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2022 that would have ensured the Government had to set a timeline for naming the date. Unfortunately, the Government voted it down. I have tabled a similar amendment on Report Stage this evening and I call on the Minister of State not to oppose it. I ask that he back our amendment to ensure a timeline for a referendum is set.

I want to make a wider point about how utterly essential water is to our lives. As we all know, we simply cannot live without water. It is essential to cooking, washing and running a business or farm. More than anything else in the world, apart from the air we breathe, we need water to live. That is how essential it is. Water is a natural resource that belongs to all of us and it is critical to every aspect of our lives, our economy and our society. It is crucial to food production, factories, schools and businesses. Any attempts to privatise water and make profit from it should never be countenanced. It is far too important ever to allow any risk of it falling into private hands for profit and allowing those private interests to hold us to ransom by owning our water and wastewater infrastructure.

That should never be allowed to happen but as long as we do not have it dealt with in our Constitution, there is always a risk it will. I made a point at the committee that if, heaven forbid, Ireland ends up in an economic situation in which we have a repeat of the troika coming in and the International Monetary Fund being in town, having it enshrined in the Constitution that public ownership of water is guaranteed means there could be no insistence by such parties on privatisation or any other changes. That would simply be off the table. We would not need to speculate about the intentions of different political parties in government and so on. Let us protect ourselves once and for all as a country by enshrining this matter in the Constitution to ensure that, no matter what happens, the privatisation route can never be gone down by any political party or Government.

The experience of water privatisation around the world has been an absolute and utter disaster, so much so that there are 235 places globally where water has been renationalised and remunicipalised. That was done because water privatisation led to a disaster in investment in public infrastructure. I offer two examples of this. In Berlin, after water was privatised, there were huge deficits in the maintenance of the infrastructure. At the same time, the profits of the private companies that bought shareholdings in that infrastructure went up sharply. This resulted in a popular vote of the people of Berlin demanding that water be brought back into public ownership. That was done at great cost to the public in having to buy back those shares. Similarly, in Paris, the privatising of water led to price hikes in water charges that were in no way justified by the low levels of investment in infrastructure.

In 24 years of privatisation of the water supply in Paris the price of water increased by 174% while the profits of the owners soared. Do we need to know anything more about water privatisation and the absolute madness of it that we should never countenance? The first year of taking water back into public ownership in Paris saw public control efficiency savings of 35%, reduction in costs of 8% in households and increased investment in infrastructure. This goes to show that public ownership of water infrastructure, and it should never be charged for, is and can be much more efficient than private sector control.

We need a referendum to enshrine in the Constitution the right to water and access public ownership of water resources. The Government is more than half way through office and as yet no date has been set. How difficult is it for the Government to do this? What is stopping the Government from doing this? Why must we wait any longer? I support having the referendum on housing on the same day. Let us name a date and get on with this. We run the risk that this Government will run out of its term of office before anything is done on this which means all the commitments on this would be meaningless. Is ceart daonna é an t-uisce. Water is a human right.

I have one other point to make about why water services and infrastructure ended up in public ownership in the first place. As we all know in this House it happened due to public health reasons. A lack of public control and investment in water and wastewater infrastructure was disastrous in regard to spread of disease. It was a disaster for the slum housing that existed in this city. The Public Health Act 1848 was passed, obviously not in this House, and gave local authorities discretionary power over drainage and water supply. That recognised how incredibly important water and, indeed. wastewater is to our very existence and public health. Before proper investment was in place and before the clearance of slum housing, which was replaced with good quality local authority housing, there was widespread disease including cholera in slum housing because of the lack of public investment and control over water supply. That is why it was brought into public ownership and there was public investment. While thankfully the incredibly bad housing conditions, those slum conditions, no longer exist, we should never lose sight of how important this is and why it is crucially important that water infrastructure is kept in public ownership and that this is enshrined in the Constitution. Safe access to water and, indeed, wastewater literally is and was a matter of life or death for people in this country.

See this speech in context