Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What is being proposed today is a travesty. I say this because there is nothing in the Bill to suggest the Government will reduce income tax, a proportion of the revenue from which goes to local authorities to fund the very utility for which the Minister is to double the charge. There is nothing in the Bill to state the taxpayers' money being set aside from the National Pensions Reserve Fund will ever be recovered from the private companies that will run Uisce Éireann. What the Government is proposing is privatisation by stealth. In the Bill, Uisce Éireann, or Irish Water, is being set up as a sub-company of a company that the Government has already indicated it wants to flog.

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