Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is not here. The issue I tabled relates to the referendum on the public ownership of our water services. I asked when the Minister will bring forward the wording, which he committed to bringing forward early this year. I also asked for the date of the referendum.

On 12 October last year I asked about the referendum on the public ownership of our water services as well as the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, framework plan and the White Paper on water services transformation which was to be introduced on 1 January this year and it has. I pointed out the resistance of the water services workers to that framework plan because they neither had the date for the referendum on the public ownership of our water services nor any definite response from the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, on their basic pay, their regular and rostered overtime and allowances which they have as water services workers within the local authority. At this stage we have no wording or date.

Last Friday, as the sponsor of the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) (No. 2) Bill 2016, I wrote a letter to the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I have again asked the committee to schedule consideration of the Bill on its agenda and to allow the Bill as soon as possible to advance to Committee Stage. I sent this on the back of five previous letters to the committee.

The Minister wrote to me on 6 November stating he was happy to confirm he would bring forward proposals on a referendum on water ownership for consideration early in the new year. The housing commission report is imminent and we still have not seen a wording or a date. In the absence of wording and date, I request that the committee should either proceed with Committee Stage of my Bill or, with an extreme sense of urgency, request the Minister to meet the committee with wording and a date for a referendum to ensure the Minister's public commitment of early in the new year is adhered to.

Since then, Unite, the union, has rejected the WRC plan and will probably take industrial action on it in the future. There have been discussions on that. On 13 February SIPTU announced it was pausing its co-operation with the framework pending receipt of local authority confirmation that it will abide with the assurances issued by the Minister that current terms and conditions will be maintained, including basic pay, regular and rostered overtime, and allowances. The LGMA has made no such commitment. Either it has no direction from the Minister, it is ignoring the direction from the Minister or it does not have the money to administer it. This has created considerable anxiety and stress to the water services workers and their families.

While I would have preferred if the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage had been here, I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, when we will see the wording and the date for the referendum. The Unite workers rejected the framework plan on that basis. There is considerable disgruntlement among the water services workers in the four unions involved because they do not have a date or wording. They see that as a crucial part of any change in their workplace status.

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