The Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership) (No. 2) Bill 2016 was put on hold on Committee Stage last March to provide the Minister with two months to engage with me on issues of wording and an amendment from his Department relating to his concern about the unintended consequences of keeping water in public ownership. Nearly a year on and we are still waiting. The Minister met me once with two of my colleagues and a second time to show me a piece of paper with a wording that he believed might work, but there has been no real engagement. I have offered for my legal team to meet his legal team or the Attorney General's legal team to try to tease this out, but that has not happened. This morning, the committee agreed to continue Committee Stage of my Bill in April, and I hope that the Minister will be able to say when he will engage with me as its sponsor in a meaningful way.

I thank the Deputy for the question. This is an important issue to me. That is why I brought it to the Cabinet before Christmas for a decision on sending what we believed could be a successful wording to the Attorney General's office. It is with the Attorney General at the moment. It is important that, when we hold a referendum on this issue, we have agreement on all sides of the House that the wording is robust enough not to have unintended consequences. The Attorney General is working on that at the moment.

In one of our previous engagements, I outlined for the Deputy the various barriers that had to be tested or jumped to get to a suitable wording. If the Deputy believes that she has a wording that crosses those thresholds sufficiently so as not to have unintended consequences, I would be interested in sitting down and talking with her about them.

As for meeting with the Attorney General, that would be a matter for him.