Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Show a bit of dignity for your office. There is a consistent pattern of the Government allowing Bills which are not unimportant - but which would not be the most important for the public or Members of the Opposition - to drag on for weeks on end. When it comes to important issues like the potential privatisation of water and the certainty of imposing charges however, the Government wants to impose guillotines to close off debate. It has been done again and again by the Government which promised a new type of politics.

There is a reason it is being done with this particular Bill. The legislation gets to the heart of the agenda of the Government and the troika and the sinister desire to loot public resources and State enterprises under the cover of the current economic crisis. We have had consistent dishonesty from the Government side throughout the debate. There have been red herrings about how the Bill is about water conservation and improving the water infrastructure. These things are said to justify the necessity for water charges and the establishment of the new water company. It is all nonsense and deliberate deceit. We are discussing the establishment of this company, water metering across the country and the introduction of water charges because it was agreed with the troika. The reason we agree anything with the troika, including this proposal, is because this and the last Government decided that the country should pay any price to bail out banks and financial institutions here and in Europe. That is the only reason we are discussing this. That is why it is in the programme for Government. It is a commitment to which the Government is tied because it has continued with the programme of bailing out the banks just as the last Government did. Spare us, therefore, the drivel about concern for water conservation or improving the water infrastructure. I am a fan of the writer James Joyce, Minister.

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