I thank Independent Ireland for bringing forward this important motion on Irish Water. It has identified many of the problems, which I think we all agree on. I have to say, however, that I radically disagree with the conclusions it draws about what needs to be done. Ultimately, its motion ends up being a blueprint for the further privatisation of water services, which is the problem, not the solution. On the things we do agree on, however, the lack of adequate infrastructure to build the houses we need is absolutely outrageous. We cannot address the housing crisis unless we provide the water infrastructure. In my area, we have been calling this out on big publicly-owned sites for years. Finally, they have started to get moving on them but there is a big delay with publicly-owned sites in areas like Rathmichael and the Old Conna Road - big publicly-owned sites for public housing with no water infrastructure put in. It takes years for that to happen. In Dublin Bay, no swim notices regularly go up. Why? It is because of a decrepit Victorian infrastructure that was identified decades ago where surface water, when it rains heavily, mixes with sewage. The sewage goes straight into Dublin Bay, so people are swimming in Dublin Bay in raw sewage. Again, this has been identified for decades. It is still not dealt with in terms of the problems at Poolbeg, which is massively under capacity for a growing population in the urban centre. There is a lack of communication from Irish Water when problems arise with leaks and boil water notices. We could go through the list. The playbook for the privatisation of water services, or any service, is to run it down so it does not work and prove that it does not work with lots of timelines. Where have we seen this before? We have seen it with special needs and so on, when people say we have to have a six-month timeline during which the resources are not provided and the teachers and workers are not provided. This is why I have the problem with the motion put forward by Independent Ireland. It does not mention extra money. We were against the setting up of Irish Water because we believed it was backdoor privatisation of local authorities that have the expertise and so on. It does not mention the extra money that is needed. Irish Water said it only has enough money to provide the infrastructure for 30,000 and not 60,000 houses. There is no extra money and the motion before us does not even mention extra money. What the motion does say is that if Irish Water cannot deliver, we should bring in private developers to do it. No, we should not. Part of the problem with Irish Water is that it is already backdoor privatisation. If we look at half the work that Irish Water does, we will see it is private companies doing it - GMC and other contractors. The problem is we need a public system. We are losing the expertise we have in the local authorities, namely, the expertise of the local authority workers. What we need is more public investment to provide the infrastructure necessary for water, not the privatisation of blue gold, and water is the blue gold of the 21st century. There are people who are out to make profits from a resource where the infrastructure is not provided properly. That is what we actually need, not privatisation. Following water charges campaign, which was about defeating the plans for the privatisation of water, we got a commitment that there would be a referendum to keep the water infrastructure in public ownership. Where is that referendum?

Sentiment score: -0.11