Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to pick up on the point made about people expressing their hopes and fears through the ballot box. It is right that they should do this and I am sure they attempted to do so last time around, but some of their hopes and fears were dashed. It is also legitimate for these individuals to come out on the streets to express their hopes and fears in the peaceful and organised way in which tens of thousands of citizens the length and breadth of the State have been doing in the past few weeks. They will continue to do so up to 10 December and beyond. I hope Members will encourage citizens to express themselves in that way, rather than wait until the next general election to make their judgment on what the Government is doing.

I want to focus on some of the statistics behind the announcement made by the Government on Irish Water and its scramble to persuade the public that it is doing enough to allay its fears. This attempt at persuasion will fall on deaf hears. This is the case for the majority of people with whom I have interacted and with whom I have been on protest marches. It is a measure of how constrained we are by EU rules and diktats that a debate on how we supply the country with clean water is dictated by rules and regulations set by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats hundreds of miles away. That is what shapes much of the debate.

We need to be honest and admit that, off or on book, the people will be borrowing to invest in infrastructure. There is nothing wrong with borrowing to provide an essential right for the people, whether it is done by the Exchequer in the name of the State or by Irish Water which is completely owned by the State. However, we have reduced this discussion to accounting rules; therefore, let us be honest about the lack of sovereignty we now enjoy. Nevertheless, there is always an alternative and Sinn Féin has shown and will show that on this and other issues there are alternatives.

Let us look closely at the figures the Government has scrambled to produce. The Government and Irish Water state €229 million will be brought in through non-domestic charges. In 2012 the local government management authority stated the average collection rate was 55%. If Irish Water can do no better than this, we are looking at it only bringing in €126 million. It is counting on receiving €271 million from domestic customers, but this figure takes no account of those who cannot and, therefore, will not pay.

The Government's operating expenses subvention is cited as being €399 million, but this figure does not include the almost €60 million it will refund to local authorities because Irish Water has now been deemed exempt from paying commercial rates, or does it take into account the €100 that may be paid to each household to offset the running costs of Irish Water, which for 1.8 million houses would amount to approximately €180 million. This €100 is laughingly called a water conservation grant. In what was published yesterday by the Government this €100 can be used for “fixing leaks, changing dripping taps or installing dual flush toilets”. Is this what the Government is hoping will get its plan over the line? Is it going to tell the European Commission’s accountants that this €100 is about water conservation, rather than offsetting bills. On the one hand, it is suggested it is all about water conservation and has nothing to do with the water charges, but then the Government tells us the water charges are €60 and €160, not the actual charges of €160 and €260. The difficulty for it is that it cannot link this support payment with water charges because it would then be included in the Government subvention and fail the market corporation test. I have heard the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, say it is right and fitting that all households, regardless of their use of water and sewerage facilities, will receive this €100, as if it was the Government's intention to do so. The reason it is being done in this way is if it were to do it any other way, it would fail the market corporation test.

The Government thinks it is playing a clever game, but accountant bureaucrats in Brussels do not have much time for the nod and wink politics by which Fine Gael and the Labour Party have ruled for the past three and a half years. The Government is panicked and playing a dangerous game. It knows this. The game it is playing is to tell the public it will provide people with €100, but this will be a sweetener to the bitter pill they will see in terms of their water charge bills.

However, there is no guarantee the €100 payment that will be made to each household will not be deemed by EUROSTAT a subvention to Irish Water because of how closely linked it is to water charges.

The reason I say the Government is playing a dangerous game is that the Government tried something like this already - it tried it before and it failed. In March of this year, when I queried the classification of a €240 million payment to Irish Water, which the Minister and the Government said was an equity investment, the Minister, Deputy Noonan, told me the following: "It is expected that the investment will be classified as an equity injection by EUROSTAT and therefore not impact the general Government deficit." Only two days ago, when I followed up on my statistical query, he told me:

For statistical purposes, following discussion with the CSO, the start date for Irish Water was taken to be 1 October 2014. As a result the €240 million was not treated as equity and no shares have been issued.

Let us clarify what that meant. The Government last year tried to invest €240 million in Irish Water and keep it off the Irish books. When I queried that this was dodgy, it said categorically it believe this would pass the EUROSTAT rules. Not only did it not get past EUROSTAT, it did not even get past the CSO, which said the Government was wrong and that, as it calculated Irish Water from 1 October, the €240 million would have to be put back on the books.

This is why I am not convinced that what the Government is planning to do will actually fly at European level or, if it does, that it will fly long-term. There is a very simple and basic demand which somehow the Government cannot hear or will not respond to, and that demand is the right to water and the scrapping of water charges. This, and only this, is what will appease the greater number of Irish people. It is something the Labour party Members in their contributions failed to understand. We have seen the statistics. Some 26% of two-adult households are living in deprived conditions yet the Minister who is present, Deputy Howlin, and his backbenchers, who follow suit, are happy to place those families with another €260 levy, or €160 if they get the €100 rebate. They cannot even afford to pay the bills they have, never mind this bill. It is time for the Government to come down from its ivory tower and listen to the people's demands.

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