The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, has told union leaders no final decision on the privatisation of Dublin's water supplies would be taken without further consultation. Mr Dempsey gave the assurances at a meeting in the Custom House yesterday.
A senior Irish Congress of Trade Unions delegation, which included the vice-president of SIPTU, Mr Jack O'Connor, and IMPACT national secretary Mr Paddy Keating told Mr Dempsey that if he pressed ahead with a Public Private Partnership (PPP) for a contractor to lease the water plant for 20 years, it would breach the 1997 Partnership Agreement with Dublin Corporation.
They added it would take over six months longer to build the plant under such an arrangement, would be more costly to operate and would offer less protection to consumers than one owned by the corporation.
The Minister said he would not make a detailed response to the ICTU delegation until he had a chance to study their critique of proposals for a £50 million scheme to upgrade Ballymore-Eustace. The plant supplies water to most of Dublin and Co Kildare.
The unions were told by Mr Dempsey that no final decision would be taken on the PPP before he had further consultations with them. The National Development Plan was based on attracting considerable private investment projects. In the water treatment sector the target for private investment was £100 million. If £50 million could not be accounted for by Ballymore-Eustace it would be difficult to find elsewhere.
In a statement after the meeting Mr Dempsey denied he wanted to privatise Dublin's water supplies or introduce water charges. He said the National Development Plan was to encourage the cost effective use of PPPs. Earlier Senator Joe Costello described the Minister's plan as a "disaster" and accused Mr Dempsey of being "hell-bent on forcing through a privatisation agenda". The "recent disaster regarding electricity deregulation in California demonstrates just how badly wrong the privatisation of essential services can go".