I am sure like the rest of us the Taoiseach remembers Phil Hogan, who long before he went to Europe and long before "golfgate", was in charge of water services. At the time, as well as threatening the population that he would turn their water down to a trickle if they did not pay water charges, he also did a deal with all 3,200 of those who worked in the water services so that they would co-operate with the establishment of Irish Water by working to a service level agreement, SLA, that was legally binding until 2024. Now we find that service level agreement is being chivvied along by none other than Irish Water itself, which wants to move the council workers over sooner than 2024. In a reply to a question recently from Deputy Boyd Barrett, the Minister said that he was asking the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to facilitate negotiations for the move to Irish Water.

We must be clear in this House that the workers in Irish Water who co-operated with the establishment of Irish Water, but who did not co-operate with the attempt to push meters on the population, will not be bullied or coerced into getting rid of their service level agreement. They see themselves as public sector workers with stable employment and that is the way many of them want to remain. SIPTU employees have voted by 98% to go on strike if there is any attempt to get rid of their SLA before 2024. I want the Taoiseach to answer a question this morning. Can we have a commitment in this House that the promised referendum on the guarantee in the Constitution that water will remain in public ownership will be conducted? In 2017 the committee set up in this House to get over a row at the time between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael recommended that such a referendum would go ahead. Deputy Joan Collins introduced a Bill that was signed by practically all the Opposition at the time to have such a referendum. The Government has sat on that and now it is prepared to go to war with the workers and to push them into this utility.

The Government may have made a commitment in the programme for Government that Irish Water would remain as a public service, but we have all seen the road that single utilities go down. The same happened with TEAM Aer Lingus and with other utilities in this country. The workers are not guaranteed that they will remain public sector workers in a publicly controlled utility. We need to give them that guarantee and the best way of doing it is for the Government to commit to having a referendum, as was fought for by the tens of thousands of people the length and breadth of the country who resisted water charges and who dragged Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael into changing their position on water charges because they were afraid of the movement from below and those people who stood with the workers to say they would not allow the water services to be privatised. We need that referendum and we need an answer from the Government on when we can have it.

I thank Deputy Bríd Smith for raising the issue. In the first instance, it is not the Government's intention to go to war with anybody. I acknowledge the workers have been critical to the development of water services and that through their dedication and commitment they have developed water services on which so many of us rely today. A significant number of stakeholders are involved in the delivery of water, principally the workers themselves, the local government sector, ICTU, relevant trade unions, Fórsa, SIPTU, Connect, Unite and Irish Water, the parent company, and so forth. There will be ongoing consultation on the evolution of the service and how it develops in the future. The programme for Government provides that Irish Water will be retained in public ownership as a national stand-alone regulated utility. Consistent with that commitment, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, brought forward a policy paper setting out the Government's approach on the next phase of the transformation for the water sector. It is critical that any movement forward must be in consultation with all involved.

Deputy Smith referred to the Workplace Relations Commission being engaged in the discussions on the framework for the future delivery of water services. That is something that will have to be entered into by agreement, engagement and consultation. The Government is determined that the views and concerns of key stakeholders must be considered and addressed within the process. I have outlined who the key stakeholders are.

Public ownership is critical to the programme for Government. It is something we insisted on and to which all three parties are committed to doing. We stated in the programme for Government that we would refer the environment, including water and its place in the Constitution, to a relevant Oireachtas joint committee for consideration. That is something we will work with the Oireachtas on regarding how that commitment can be brought forward. There has been some consideration and exploration of the protection of water within the Constitution and how one would progress that more fully in the context of a broader appraisal of the constitutional protection that would apply to the physical environment more generally.

I wish to respond to the Taoiseach on a number of issues. I understand there is a statement in the programme for Government to guarantee that water will remain as a public utility, but in fact a creeping privatisation is taking place by the outsourcing of functions. Irish Water declared it would begin a programme of replacing lead pipes, but it outsourced it. It declared it would undertake a programme to push up the water pressure in some areas, and it outsourced it.

The workers employed by the councils are the key people. I personally know many of them. They are friends. They understand the water system. They know where the problems are and where the solutions are. They know what happens under the ground almost like one knows the streets and roads. The problem here is that they do not believe the Government and that pushing forward now, by trying to get them to give up their service level agreement and to go into Irish Water by the end of this year, as stated in the White Paper, is an attempt to coerce them. They have a legal guarantee about their status under that service level agreement until 2024. The Minister and Taoiseach should back off and stop trying to back the workers into this position or they will face significant opposition.

There will be no coercion. That should not be asserted. There simply cannot be coercion. The Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013 provides that local authority staff who are subject to a service level agreement with Irish Water would transfer to Irish Water should the agreement end. The existing terms and conditions of these staff are protected under the Act in such circumstances. In outlining its expectations about the next phase of transformation, the Government fully respects these terms and conditions, which can only be changed by collective agreement. That is the factual position and why, given the complexity and scale of what is involved here, it is deemed important that the engagement would take place with the Workplace Relations Commission to identify and agree a framework for the future delivery of water services. In some respects, this could be progression and an advance for workers once their core rights are protected. That is a key point. In the past, there have been agreements where those rights were protected as different utilities were developed.