Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

I am sure people listening to or reading the report of this debate are not ignorant of this. All of a sudden our environmental conscience, and our need to save water and allegedly to spread the revenue burden for local authorities across a wider base have been discovered at the same time that the IMF with its track record of privatisation of public utilities throughout the world arrives in Ireland. It is shameful that our people have been squeezed to the bone - to use a water analogy they have been to the well repeatedly and now the well is dry. There is only so much that can be squeezed from our people.

As a former county councillor, I find the argument about water conservation farcical. Every year at the annual budget meeting we looked at the issue of water charges as they were applied to businesses, farmers and community groups under the diktat of the EU. We heard that it had to happen owing to the requirement for the user to pay and environmental concerns. At that same meeting it was reported to us that 40% - this could have been an understatement - of the water in the county was lost owing to antiquated pipe infrastructure and no doubt this was replicated across the country. While businesses and farmers were being squeezed to pay for water, we were losing almost half our water because of the pipe infrastructure.

If we are serious about water conservation Sinn Féin believes we need investment in our pipe infrastructure. If the IMF, EU and ECB were serious about the needs of the people and serious about environmental conservation, they would insist on an immediate investment programme in replacing our antiquated pipe system to ensure as much of our precious water is saved as possible. Of course that is not happening and instead we are being asked to pay. This is a three-card trick. The Minister and others have said this money will be reinvested back into local authorities and used locally. What will actually happen is that the money collected will go to the local authorities but the local government fund will be cut, which means the money will ultimately end up in the hands of the financial gamblers across the world who recklessly invested in this State. So our people will be squeezed not to help the environment or strengthen the local authorities, but to pay for our good friends in the international financial institutions, who have looked after us so well in recent years. It is a shameful episode. We need investment in our pipe infrastructure and obviously people need to be educated in water conservation and given incentives to do so.

I wish to touch on the international angle. The very people who caused our economic crisis through their deregulation, open and free markets, and their bible of unbridled capitalism, also believe passionately in the privatisation of public resources. Let us consider the track record of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in other parts of the world. In return for addressing debt, they have ensured that the water resources of these people are taken over. Veolia is doing considerable business in this country and is also doing considerable business in Israel assisting the regime there in its oppression of the Palestinian people. Veolia, a French multinational company, has a lovely track record in Bolivia where water charges became so high that they led to social revolution. I could elaborate for hours on the impact of the privatisation of water on poor people. Could any fact be more disturbing than the fact that the architects of the global financial crisis, which has had an impact on working families across Europe and internationally, are the very people who are now seeking to benefit from the agenda to privatise our most precious resource with a view to ultimately implementing another part of their agenda, the privatisation of our public infrastructure? It may start with the setting up of some quango taking control from the local authorities but this quango will ultimately be sold on, as is the plan based on the McCarthy report and others.

Sinn Féin will not remain silent on this issue. It sees the clear agenda that has been laid out by those who move the chess pieces across the board internationally. It sees how these people have used debt to take control of vital resources across the world. Thankfully, it also sees people fighting back across the world , particularly in Latin America. These poor, ill-resourced people are inspirational to others globally. Sinn Féin will join the international struggle to keep water and other vital national resources in the hands of the people, who pay taxes.

During a debate on the universal social charge, we were told by the Minister of State at the Department of public expenditure and reform, Deputy Brian Hayes, that we have one of the most progressive taxation systems in the world, that we should be very proud of the State we have built, and that we should be very proud when we drive through parts of south Dublin, where there is dire poverty and wealth beyond one's wildest dreams within hundreds of yards of each other. That the Minister of State, a Dublin man who has witnessed this disparity, can sit this Chamber and say we have one of the most progressive tax systems in the world is unacceptable. Shame on the Government for imposing another charge, another hit, on people who are already struggling, and shame on it for implementing the agenda of international financiers, who have already squeezed our people enough.

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