Paul Murphy: Renaming Irish Water Seen as Cover for Privatisation

Thanks, Chair. I thought Deputy Connolly made interesting points earlier about the use of the Irish language and I definitely support the use of the Irish language in terms of naming, state bodies and so on. It's an important way of kind of just popularising and bringing into normal use and so on. But I can't help but be a little bit cynical when it comes to this naming and wonder if the name is getting changed from Irish Water to Iska Aran. because of the deep unpopularity of Irish Water and because in fact the deep dislike that many ordinary people hold for Irish Water as an institution and its connection to the project of commodification of water and future potential privatisation of water. There is obviously a context to this debate and the context is the mass social movement which happened in 2014, 2015, 2016 and which prevented the agenda of the political establishment in this country and the capitalist elite in the European Union to drive through commodification and privatisation of our water. That mass movement of hundreds of thousands of people protesting, of 73% of people refusing to pay, of community organisation at an incredible scale including blocking of water meters and so on, that defeated a very serious government agenda of commodification then leading to privatisation. Obviously at the time those of us who opposed the water charges were ridiculed for suggesting that such a process of water charges may lead to privatisation but it's very clear from anyone who analyses for example the various Troika programmes that were imposed that where they didn't have charges they imposed charges like in Ireland with the agreement of the then government. Or where they had charges they imposed privatisation as for example in Greece. That was a clear agenda and it remains a clear agenda. Obviously the political establishment in this country can't go out and talk about their support for water charges. But do we really think that the wholehearted support they previously had for water charges has gone away, that they really changed their mind because of the mass movement? No, they were defeated, they were forced back. And so I think that we and the mass movement, we together stopped the process of commodification and privatisation through the front door for now. I think we have to remain vigilant about that process happening through the back door. I mean officially we're meant to be getting bills for excess usage charges of water next year. I mean they were originally meant to start in 2019 and because of the mass opposition, because of the absence of water meters in what half the homes in the state, the government has put that off and put that off again and again. And I presume under pressure, particularly in context of the cost of living crisis, the government will be forced to put that off again. But that is meant to be coming and is a back door towards commodification, full charges, etc. The other most likely route to effective privatisation is the kind of privatisation by the back door, which is already happening in terms of how Irish Water currently operates. A lot of outsourcing to private companies, and not just outsourcing of the source that this company is paid to do this work, but outsourcing in the form of various design, build and operate contracts, which effectively mean that large parts of our water infrastructure are run on a for-profit basis. They're handed over to private companies from their very inception. You design it, you build it, you operate and effectively you're running on a for-profit basis. And what we may well see as an extension of that more and more and more, until very little of our water is held in effective public ownership, if not the threat of a future economic crisis. And then the government says, okay, we're going to sell off Irish water directly. And one of the things that, in a sense, the water movement won, was a promise that we're going to have a referendum to enshrine the public ownership of water in the constitution. And that's important for everybody in this country who drinks and uses water, which is literally everybody. And it's particularly important for those 3,000 workers who are expected from the 1st of January next year to transfer over from local authorities working for the state to Irish water. They are extremely concerned that they're being transferred over to a semi-state company that at a future point in time directly or indirectly can become a private company and effectively lose all of their rights. So it's not a small matter. And, you know, I presume the minister will say, and you know, you're nodding, and I'm sure you personally agree with the idea of a referendum for enshrining water in public ownership. But it is a matter of very clear public record that the government has dragged its feet on this, this government and the previous government. I mean, I sat in multiple committees dealing with Joan Collins' bill. Six years ago now, Joan Collins introduced a bill to say we should have a referendum to put public ownership of water into our constitution. And really, we were treated to all sorts of kind of arcane legal arguments, were trotted out just to avoid going forward to the referendum. There wasn't any meaningful proposal of, oh, let's just have this wording. It was just, this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem. We had six months ago, we had the promise by the housing minister that there'd be a referendum this year or early next year. But, as Deputy Barry said, I asked the Taoiseach about this yesterday, and the answer I got was very, very far from reassuring. The Taoiseach told me there is no reason for workers to be concerned. But he actually didn't give any reassurance whatsoever, either in terms of the content of the referendum or the timeline for the referendum. When I pushed for an answer about when it would be happening, I was told we will get a timeline when we are ready for it. And he said we couldn't have a referendum or even prepare for a referendum, apparently because of COVID over the past couple of years. He told me Deputy Paul Murphy should acknowledge that significant progress has been made in recent years in cementing the public ownership dimension of Irish water in terms of the state structure that has been introduced. There is no question about that. I don't agree there's no question about that when we don't have a referendum. So we didn't get any indication about timeline and this is an essential, a core issue for the 3,000 workers as well as everybody in this country is concerned about water. But also what he indicated in terms of the wording of the referendum was concerning. And if you read the programme for government, it's also concerning. It's a general kind of reference to water and our natural resources. He said the fundamental issue around the referendum on water is control of a natural resource besides the mechanism by which it is managed. Be it an agency or local authorities, that is a matter of our ongoing debate. It is state owned, the state is a shareholder, the minister has committed a referendum. It is a referendum that will deal with the broader issue of ownership of water. I don't, I have an idea of what he's getting at there and what he's getting at is we're not going to put in the constitution that we're not going to privatise Irish water. We're going to put in the constitution some kind of general idea that the ownership of the water in general is held in the context of the state. But not that we can't sell water for profit, the water that is coming through your taps and so on, and not that it can't be privatised. I believe that the referendum that the government is going to deliver, based on what was said just yesterday, is not going to meet the expectations and the hopes and what is necessary to satisfy the demands of the water workers. And I'll just finish on their issues. I want to commend the local authority workers for fighting for their rights and for the rights of every person in this country who wants to see publicly owned and properly provided water. They've organised a series of protests across the state. I think we don't have any Fine Gael TDs here, but I think they've got a rude awakening at their thinking whereby, again, the issue of water is present. They're marching outside, they're saying we're demanding a referendum. I think, you know, it is absolutely reasonable for them to say, we want a ballot. We're going to be transferred, effectively, we're going to be transferred over. They don't feel that they have much choice, that they're being faced with not much of a choice at all, given what will happen to them if they stay in the local authorities in 2026. And they're saying, we need to have a ballot about this. We need to have a democratic decision within our union as to whether we are accepting this or not. That is a very reasonable position for them to adopt, in my opinion. They were previously informed that no such agreement would happen without their democratic consent to it. So I think they're absolutely right to be campaigning, to be pushing, to be demanding ballots within their unions about whether they accept this deal or not. If the situation doesn't change, if we don't have a guarantee of a timeline of a meaningful referendum about public ownership of water in a real sense, and if the workers aren't satisfied in terms of the various issues they're raising about conditions, about pensions, well then on the 1st of January, in my opinion, there's likely to be a very significant problem. In my opinion, the workers would be absolutely justified in engaging in industrial action to say, we're not going to be transferred over to Irish water. And it's very easy for the government to solve this. It's very easy, I'm putting you on notice now, and the workers have put you on notice through their actions. The government can avoid all of these things by going for a meaningful referendum, by engaging with the workers, by listening to them. If they don't, they're going to be faced with the active opposition of these local authority workers, and with very, very broad public support. Because the public obviously get this, it is very deeply in the public sentiment that water must not be commodified, water must not be privatised, that we must enshrine those things in our constitution, that we want to guarantee that what has happened, for example, in terms of our bin services, in terms of commodification, leading to privatisation, leading to massive attacks on workers' rights and a decline in terms of services for people, that that must not happen in relation to something as essential as water. So I do hope that we will get meaningful responses in terms of the referendum and in terms of engagement with the workers. Thanks. Thanks.