Richard Boyd Barrett: Warns Motion Risks Water Privatisation

I thank Independent Ireland for bringing forward this important motion on Irish Water. They have identified many of the problems which I think we all agree on. I have to say, however, I radically disagree with the conclusions they draw about what needs to be done and I think ultimately their motion ends up being a blueprint for the further privatisation of water services, which is the problem, not the solution. But on the things we do agree on, 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 the big delay on publicly owned sites in areas like Rath Michael, the O'Connor Road, big publicly owned sites for public housing, no water infrastructure put in. It takes years for it to happen. In Dublin Bay no swim notices regularly go up. Why? Because of a decrepit Victorian infrastructure that was identified decades ago where surface water when it rains heavily mixes with sewage and 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's still not dealt with in terms of the problems out at Poole Beg which is massively under capacity for a growing population in the urban centre. The lack of communication from Irish water when problems with leaks and boil water notices. You can go through the list, right? But you see, what is the playbook for the privatisation of water services? Or any service is to run it down so it doesn't work. Prove that it doesn't work with lots of timelines. Where have we seen this before with special needs and so on? Or we've got to have a six-month timeline which the resources are not provided for, the teachers, the workers aren't provided for. And this is why I have the problem with the motion put forward by Independent Ireland. It doesn't mention extra money. Even Irish water, and we were against the setting up of Irish water because we believed there was backdoor privatisation of local authorities who had the expertise and so on. They don't mention the extra money that's needed. Irish water have said to provide 60,000 houses, they only have enough money to provide the infrastructure for 30,000. There's no extra money. And the motion before us doesn't even mention extra money. What it does say is we should, if Irish water can't deliver, we should bring in private developers to do it. No, we shouldn't. Part of the problem with Irish water is there's already backdoor privatisation. If you look at half the work that Irish water do, you'll see there's private companies doing it. GMC, contractors, this, that and the other contractor. The problem is we need a public system. We're losing the expertise we have in the local authorities, the expertise of the Irish, 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, let me tell you. And those people who are out to make profits from a resource that is not, where the infrastructure isn't provided properly. So that is what we actually need, not privatisation. And where is the committed to, after the water charges campaign, which was about defeating the plants to privatisation, we got a commitment that there would be a referendum to keep the water infrastructure in public ownership. Where is that referendum? Goedibhagattha. Yeah! Goedibhagattha. I childhood. Goedib. Goedibhagattha. Sport. Goedibhagattha. Goedibhagattha.