Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

It is a huge system, top-heavy with officials - not the ordinary people who are doing the work on the ground. There are no men with shovels on the ground. We will pay these charges, but roads and sewer systems are being neglected - everything is being neglected. The briars are meeting you up the boreens. They have done away with the local improvement schemes and everything that was in any way good to prop up a system that is an abject failure and that is top-heavy with officialdom. They have lost out on the fees and charges they were getting from planning permissions. Last week in Tipperary there were seven planning permissions in seven days. That gravy train is gone, and now the Minister wants to give the local councils this system. He wants to screw the ordinary people to keep the fat cats in jobs. These are the people who are avoiding the pension levy - the directors and senior management, not the ordinary people earning less than €100,000, the ordinary workers on the ground, or the clerical officers who do a decent day's work for a decent day's pay. I am talking about the top people who have credit cards. I will table a parliamentary question to ask the Minister how many credit cards each county council has given to its managers and directors of services. It is a gravy train at the expense of the ordinary people.

The ordinary people are tired of this. I thought the Minister would know that because he lives among the ordinary people. What is it they say? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As I said before to the Minister, it took the Government members only a number of months to become arrogant and start attacks on the people, while it took the last Government ten or 12 years. They are good learners and they are fast runners, but they will not be fast enough to run from the people's wrath on this, because they will not accept it.

To return to the septic tank charges, people will not register. I do not advocate disobedience, but they will not register, and I doubt they will pay this charge either. The Minister has added a punishment to the Bill - he will charge people extra if they do not pay. I am in business and so are many others in this House. Most business people throw out a carrot at this time of year to persuade people to buy their products - two for the price of one, or whatever. Even when buying an Aero bar, one gets two for a euro now. What is the Minister doing? If people do not pay on time, he wants €10 extra. This is because it is planned by bureaucrats who do not have a clue about how people have to live. They think they can add on more, and add interest on top of interest, instead of offering a carrot to people to come with them along the road and support these so-called reforms.

The people were promised reforms, but they got nothing but deforms. It is an abuse of the people, of the electorate and of the system of government we have. It will not last. The honeymoon is over. It is the Government's budget and the Government's choices, and its members will have to stand up and face the music now. The Minister will have to go back to Kilkenny and face the people at the weekend and the following weekend. Kilkenny might beat us in the All-Ireland final, but the Minister will not beat the people with this kind of regressive, penal legislation.

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