David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment. We are dealing with the transfer of property of water services authorities to Irish Water. In the context of that particular section and the amendment, we need to raise with the Minister of State the very serious issues raised by the Dublin City Manager regarding the €2 billion worth of assets that will be transferred from Dublin City Council to Irish Water and the very genuine concerns the city manager expressed. Obviously, his core concern was the loss of water services and the ability of that particular local authority to respond to severe weather situations in the future. He is on record as saying that operational risks to the city council are very real because of the passage of this Bill. Many of the issues and concerns he raised are very similar to those raised by a number of Senators raised over the past number of days in the lengthy debates we had. Many of these issues related to the transfer of assets, properties and liabilities from local authorities to Irish Water. One of the concerns expressed by the Dublin City Manager was that while €2 billion euro worth of assets were being transferred, the €330 million worth of pension liabilities will stay with the local authority. I support the amendment but also oppose the entire section. We had an amendment which sought to oppose the section but which was ruled out of order. The reason was that-----