Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Again, there is a commitment to a referendum on the public ownership of water. Uisce Éireann as a public utility is enshrined in legislation, and that would have to be changed through subsequent legislation. That is the case. I will go back to the point of the DBO projects. I refer to the scale of the challenge for water and wastewater delivery. In this House, we speak on a daily basis about the delivery of housing, but the delivery of infrastructure for water and wastewater is a critical component of that. Uisce Éireann cannot carry that out within its own staffing complement and resources. It has to be the case that we use these DBOs to deliver the projects. Again, I want to give reassurance that Uisce Éireann is a publicly owned utility and will remain so. However, it does use the services of private companies for project management and project delivery of its capital programme.

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