Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

To add to the rack-renting torture that so many people are subjected to as private tenants, the Government will appoint landlords to rob tenants' deposits. This is breathtaking. One of the most vulnerable groups in our society, those depending on private landlords, are to be subject to further robbery, with the landlord as the agent. This is some legacy for a Labour Party Minister to leave. The legislation will be bitterly opposed and I appeal to tenants not to be intimidated. They should join the anti-water-charges campaign, and ordinary homeowners will boycott the charge and fight to bring it down.

The water charges saga has been characterised by the most incredible mendacity and deceit by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Conservation was the catch-cry. The Taoiseach passionately said we should turn off the taps a few weeks ago. The Tánaiste passionately said to use less a few weeks ago. Conservation has now disappeared and is nowhere to be seen. It has been dropped without ceremony. For 20 years, we put forward serious conservation proposals and water-saving measures that were never taken up. In Denmark, water conservation measures such as retrofitting of homes have lessened the usage of water.

The Tánaiste has had the audacity to continue the media smear of decent residents in communities such as west Tallaght that have been hit by years of austerity. Among the ordinary women who organised the water charges protest when she visited were women who administer the food bank from the same building she visited. Is it any wonder people are angry? Any people's movement from 1913 on has been met by the usual pathetic smears of sinister forces and fringe elements.

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