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

I wish to draw attention to two events in the news this week. First, I express my solidarity with the water services workers all over the country, in particular those of them belonging to Unite who will be going out on strike this Friday. We need to make sure these workers keep their pay, conditions and public service status. Guarantees around conditions such as allowances, regular and rostered overtime and the on-call allowance must be red-circled as they are pension-deductible. Their livelihoods are under threat, which is why those workers are going out on strike on Friday.

The second issue is the collapse of Thames Water in England. Thames Water is sitting on more than £16 billion worth of debt and a history of massive problems not just with leaks and sewage contamination but its very high executive pay and shareholder dividends. In 1989, water was privatised in England under Margaret Thatcher. The industry had its debt paid up before privatisation. Since 1989, private water companies have racked up more than £55 billion in debt and yet have paid out £66 billion in shareholder dividends.

It pays €1.5 billion in interest on that debt every year. Customers water bills have increased by 40% above the rate of inflation and England's rivers and beaches are plagued with pollution and sewage, with a massive loss of biodiversity and marine life. They have significant problems with leaks and ageing water systems. The industry has become a monopoly. In the context of Thames Water alone, the British Government is looking at having to pay out billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to save a collapsing water company that has done nothing but rip off customers, price gouge, chase profits and leave the water system in disrepair.

This was the path that Fine Gael and the Labour Party wanted to bring us down with water charges and the formation of Irish Water. That was the popular movement that the Right2Water campaign fought against. The Government is trying to get us back on that track with the stealth privatisation of Irish Water through private contracting and outsourcing.

Costs are going up, our waterways are getting worse and the EPA report states that the number of near-pristine river sites in Ireland has declined from over 590 in 1980 to 32 today. This whole project is a failure. I have heard reports about Irish Water paying people three times as much to carry out work that used to be done by local authority workers. These EPA reports will look a great deal worse if this trend continues. I would very much welcome it if the Committee of Public Accounts investigated some of these practices in Irish Water.

The Government has been running from a referendum on the public ownership of water for years. The majority of this House voted for that. Two of the parties in government supported that vote. We need to scrap Irish Water and put water properly back in public hands for the sake of our citizens, our biodiversity, our rivers and our waterways.

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