As Deputy McDonald has indicated, Members received the report of the commission on water last evening. The very first recommendation of the expert commission concerns the public ownership of the water infrastructure.

It states that as part of the overall approach to settling the issue addressed in the report, the expert commission recommends that the adoption of a suitable constitutional provision on public ownership of water services be more fully addressed by the Oireachtas committee as part of its deliberations. The Dáil has already passed a Bill on Second Stage to achieve this objective. We are told that the Government was briefed this week on the complexities that would arise if water was the only utility network given constitutional protection. The Labour Party has published a referendum Bill that protects all our networks, including gas and electricity. It avoids a repetition of the disaster of the sale of the telecommunications network some years ago.

Whether those of us in the House like it, there is a real distrust of politicians on this issue. There is a real fear that whatever laws we pass – the Minister has indicated that we have already enacted laws to protect it as a public utility – we need to go beyond that now to reassure people and to assuage real fears. While the detail will be addressed more fully by the committee, as the Minister has said, the report makes clear that the principle of public ownership must be enshrined in the Constitution. Yesterday, before the report was even published, we saw reports of Cabinet briefings against a referendum.

Will the Government support the idea of a referendum to keep our water infrastructure in public ownership? A Bill has already passed the House to that effect. If so, will the Government give a guarantee to the House that the resulting referendum will take place during 2017? Will the Government publish and provide to the committee now established the briefings and advices given to it in respect of such a referendum in order that the committee can carry out its work properly informed?

I thank Deputy Howlin for raising this matter. It is worth restating one point. While I fully acknowledge the public disquiet, section 2(1) of the Water Services Act 2014 provides that there will be no change in the status of Irish Water without a majority of votes cast in a plebiscite in favour of the proposal. We already have legal provision in place, as Deputy Howlin knows.

The Deputy's party has brought forward Private Members' legislation. As he is aware, we have not opposed it and we are open to discuss it. However, this has to be done in the usual way, whereby we evaluate the potential impact of any such legislation and ensure that the decisions we take are robust for the future. Certainly, I am of the view that, as a State, we need to protect our core networks and ensure they are available and managed in the interest of the State. We have seen the mistakes made in other jurisdictions, as well as our own, whereby such decisions were not taken with due caution. A Bill put forward in this area on the back of the recommendations will have to be seriously considered by the committee in the first instance. Then, on foot of the committee report, which, I understand, will come within three months, we will be able to make decisions about where we go from there in terms of a potential referendum.

We ought not to seek to pre-empt the work of the committee that we have appointed. It has valuable work to do. We must acknowledge that those responsible have found the legislative assurance we provided to be insufficient. That is what they found in public opinion and the Oireachtas has to take account of that. I am sure it will do so in the committee.

I welcome this acknowledgement. The Labour Party supported the Water Services Act that gave the plebiscite guarantee, but, to be blunt, it is not good enough. People want further assurance and want to hold it in their own hands. That is why we need a constitutional referendum. I welcome the views of the Minister in this regard. Let us agree across the House that we will do that. That would be one thing off the agenda.

A second issue arises in respect of those law-abiding citizens who have paid the charges. The matter was pursued by Deputy McDonald, but to no clear view. Anyone who believes that people are going to be pursued and that Irish Water is going to get that money now is being fanciful.

It is absolutely a requirement, if charges are not to be imposed, that they are not imposed on anybody. I, therefore, want an assurance from the Minister that the Government will ensure that those law-abiding taxpayers who, for whatever reason, paid their water charges in good faith will have all the moneys they paid fully reimbursed in order to achieve what the commission has recommended, that is, that citizens who paid should not be treated less favourably than those who did not.

We must consider in the committee how the issue of fairness for those who have respected their civic duty and paid a tax that was duly charged and duly underpinned by law is to be dealt with. However, I will not make a decision to commit money today to the repayment of charges. As a former Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, the Deputy would be the first to criticise me if I were to rise as a Minister to make commitments of payment to the Opposition without first giving the Dáil-----

It is a matter of equity.

-----an opportunity to deliberate on this and arrive at the consensus approach. The commission has done very valuable work in showing elements of fairness that must be respected: the fair treatment of those who paid their water charges, the fair treatment of those who have paid for water for years through water schemes, group schemes and so on, and fairness in the sense that if some people use water excessively and plainly waste a resource that is very costly to produce, the general taxpayer should not have to carry the cost of that behaviour. Important issues of fairness must, therefore, be teased out by the committee, and we look forward to that.