Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

In the last 1990s when Deputy Brendan Howlin was Minister for the Environment, a comprehensive review of the funding of local authorities was undertaken, including how water should be provided and funded. KPMG consultants were engaged at the time. Their written report concluded that the metering of domestic water supply would be an uneconomic proposition, having regard to the revenue generated; that the charge for domestic water and sewerage facilities is thus more in the nature of a tax and should be consolidated into general taxation. At that time it was agreed that the local authorities would receive all of the motor taxation revenue in order to fund those services. However, when this Government came to power it changed that policy and decided to put it hands into that money, take it from the local authorities and instead transfer it to pay the banking debt. Now the Government thinks it can dress that up in yet another austerity charge to get people to pay again for something for which they have already paid.

Listening to the Government one would think that there was never a pipe fixed nor any investment undertaken. In the 1990s, the Dublin local authorities reduced leakage rates to very acceptable best practice international levels simply by investment. Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of euro as is being done to install water meters and to set up this giant quango, investment in the infrastructure is a far better way forward.

People are very upset at the bonus culture particularly when set against what is happening for ordinary people in the workplace. They are upset by the discourtesy of Irish Water and they are upset at the ongoing mess. However, the big problem is that they cannot afford to pay and they will not pay for something for which they have paid already. That the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan would say that this was a modest charge, is sickening. The very reason the assessed charge is continuing is because the charges will be astronomical.

I was at a packed public meeting in New Ross the other night at which people showed me their meter readings. For example, a meter that was installed in July is now reading 93,000 units; a man showed me that his meter reading rose 3,500 litres between Sunday and the meeting on Wednesday. These bills are going to be astronomical and the movement against them will be even bigger on 1 November.

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