Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

Some families will receive bills of up to €500. If they get tax relief of €100, they will be faced with a new austerity tax of €400. An old-age pensioner living alone faces a new austerity tax of €70 or €80 if he or she receives €100 from the Government. We are subsidising a private limited company set up by the Government to raise €500 million and now the State will subsidise the same company with €500 million or €600 million of a subsidy. This is economic madness.

Whatever measures were introduced for the short-term unemployed, this is a tax they cannot afford. That was the message sent out last Saturday when nearly 100,000 people came out from Dingle to Donegal, from Gorey to Galway and from Dublin. They said they would not be able to pay the tax. It was a simple message. One placard said that when the bill comes through the door in January and there is a choice between paying the water tax and feeding the kids, that person would be feeding the kids. That is the message the Taoiseach must take from the protest and the by-elections. Anti-austerity and anti-water-tax candidates took those seats. This is not about elections but about what people have left in their pockets. Any gain in direct taxation has been wiped out by the austerity tax of water. Will the Taoiseach accept the inevitable? On 1 November, people are coming back out onto the streets. We will see if they come out in their hundreds of thousands as they did last Saturday. I hope it sends a clear message to the Government that the tax must be abolished.

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