Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

About a year ago, I was one of the Deputies who voted against the establishment of Irish Water. I foresaw that Irish Water would be a disaster and turn out to be the toxic brand it was described as last night. That is precisely what happened. Water taxes or charges are a step too far for constituents who have suffered so badly from health, education, social welfare benefit and other cuts since 2008 and the onerous and bullying imposition of the household property tax. At weekend information clinics, as I am sure other Members experience, people show me their weekly or fortnightly payslips with major deductions for PAYE, PRSI, USC, pension contributions, the weekly or fortnightly property tax payment and, now, the new water tax. A few months ago, I put it to the Taoiseach that this vital question, which is exercising people so much, should be put to people in a general election. We should have an immediate general election and let the people decide. Their views have not been listened to and I reiterate my call for that.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, as the political leader of the Labour Party on Dublin City Council, I fiercely opposed water taxes. In that era, my neighbours in the Coolock-Artane and Raheny-Kilbarrack wards, which I represented in turn, were suffering deeply from the vicious and cruel cuts of the Haughey and Reynolds Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats Governments. As now, we had massive emigration and suffering of our people. We had the wealth and resources in the country to upgrade significantly our national infrastructure in health, education, transport and water and drainage services. We still have it today.

As chairperson of the general purposes committee of Dublin City Council through the 1990s, despite the ferocious contempt of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parties for this city and area, we managed to upgrade significantly the water services of the four Dublin local authority areas and the surrounding counties. In 2012, when the former Minister, Phil Hogan, made his disastrous decision to pursue Irish Water, we were producing 1.6 billion litres of water daily to a very high standard - 99% pure. This is not what the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, told us last night or the constant mantra of the Taoiseach.

Irish Water was always a bad idea and badly thought out and executed. We heard something about its parents this morning. If it was a film or theatre production, it would be a Fianna Fáil production, whose Members are not in the Chamber, with Fine Gael direction and a Labour Party fall guy. It will be a tragedy for that party, just as it was before, and the party will be written out of the script like the Green Party. Yesterday, the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, had an opportunity to remove the toxicity of Irish Water and its taxes from the backs of the Irish people and from his unfortunate colleagues in the Labour Parliamentary Party. He could simply have come into the House, apologised at length for the madcap error-strewn history of Irish Water and the great distress it has caused our hard-pressed citizens and then simply announced the abolition of Irish Water and its hateful water taxes. Sadly, the Minister refused to take the opportunity yesterday and persisted with the morass of Irish Water. Irish Water is a bad idea because it was created as part of Bord Gáis Éireann, one of the least efficient, costly and most remote semi-State companies. Most Members have had that experience of Bord Gáis. It was also a bad idea because it included vast local drainage networks along with local water systems in a new huge and unwieldy quango. Why would we have every single street in urban Ireland, every townland and every pipeline under one organisation? It is not like electricity or gas, it is a more complex double system.

More importantly, the financial numbers for Irish Water simply do not add up. It was disappointing the Minister did not give us those numbers in the House. Members had to go back to their laptops and telephones to find the figures on a Twitter account. The numbers do not add up and the vast bulk of funding for Irish Water will come from the Exchequer, as it should and as is appropriate.

There is only one settlement and one solution for Irish Water. The Minister should stop spending money on useless, unnecessary and expensive meters and abolish the company and its egregious taxes, return the water services function to our much less expensive and, for all their faults, more efficient local authorities, perhaps operating on a regional basis. After the general election, this will be the solution. The Minister might as well do it now before his party is devastated.

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