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

In fact, there are only four of us so we will have two and a half minutes each. The people of this country gave their verdict on water charges last Saturday week when 100,000 people took to the streets and said they could not and would not pay the charges, and the Government had no right to impose yet another crippling tax on low and middle income households and to make them pay for what is a basic human right. That was the overwhelming sentiment; water is a human right. One's access to a right cannot be dictated by one's ability to pay. The Minister will be sure on 1 November that the demonstration was not a flash in the pan, because on the next occasion, instead of having 100,000 people on the streets of Dublin there will be thousands of people in hundreds of locations across the country as the movement against the hated water charges moves into every town and county in the country. The resistance will only escalate from there.

It is about time this Government realised that the people will not accept water charges and will resist them every step of the way. The Government should listen to the people when they say water is a human right. This is our resource and the Government has no right to hand it to a private company, to the consultants who are milking Irish Water, to charge us for a natural resource that belongs to the people.

Finally, I wish to highlight a shocking fact that has not been aired in this debate. I refer to the general conditions for a water and wastewater connection agreement, which, incredibly, states that under the terms and conditions for customers signing up to the agreement, Irish Water demands that a customer must receive written permission from it to put water flowing off a roof or even off paving stones into Irish Water's sewers. This is water from the sky - not treated water coming in through the pipes - but the water from the sky. Given that the charge is made up of 50% of water coming in and 50% water going out, this is setting the legal basis to charge people for water from the sky. This is what was done in Detroit and in Bolivia and it is shameful. This is being legally established in the conditions which people will sign up to. We are not going to pay for that; we will pay when God sends us the bill and God does not exist.

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