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

One of the reasons people are absolutely furious and have come out onto the streets in recent weeks and will come out again in huge numbers tomorrow - it is not just about paying water charges - is the dishonesty in politics, with political parties, Governments Ministers and Taoisigh thinking they can play the people for fools. The people are very angry about this. Every now and again the Government faces a crisis and people get really angry and then apparently we have ardent words from the Taoiseach and the Minister about how they are listening to the people. On the face of it, they seem to display a little humility and appear to be listening, but actually the spin, the dishonesty, the manoeuvring, the game playing and the attempt to play people for fools continue. We have seen it again tonight with this carry-on in respect of the late sitting. It is a peculiar, absurd little game that I do not fully understand and, frankly, I do not even care too much, as it is part of the continuous game playing. The Bill represents the same.

There is a commitment not to privatise when they know that the people have stated clearly that they do not want to see their water services privatised and they want cast iron guarantees that they will not be privatised. For the past week or two, after the Bill was published, the Government has been saying, "We have it now. They will not be privatised. It is included in the Bill that they will not be privatised and we have taken measures to make sure they will not be privatised." However, of course, the devil is in the detail, as usual. There is no guarantee. It is utterly meaningless and a pretence. It is another attempt to deceive and the Government keeps doing it. I wonder if the Minister thinks he will not be found out. Part of the reason people are on the streets is the way in which the Labour Party, having been humiliated on the issue of bin charges for its complicity in the privatisation of refuse services, continued to spin a line, "It was all those people who were boycotting bin charges who caused the privatisation of refuse services". Was this really the case? How is it that refuse services were privatised in rural areas first where there had been no boycott campaigns and no opposition to paying? The last places to have refuse services privatised were the places in which people resisted. They lasted ten years longer than anyone else precisely because they had resisted. Does the Minister think they have not worked this out? Does he think they have not worked out that if they have to pay five cent in user charges, that it will only move in one direction and that the services will be privatised? Does he think they have not worked out that when the contracts to install the meters go to the richest man in the country, that, in fact, they have already been privatised and that all of his assurances mean nothing? Does he think they have not figured this out? Does he think they are stupid? He obviously does because he would not be saying what he is if he did not think he could play the people for fools. However, they are not fools. I cannot believe he believes what he is saying because he knows that once user charges are introduced, privatisation is inevitable, as everybody knows.

As for the off balance sheet stuff, we listened to the people from Detroit who described it as "financialisation", another word for bonds. They said the issuing of bonds in Detroit had led directly to charges sky rocketing to the point where people were being charged nearly $1,000 a year and where three quarters of the charge was for water going out. They were being charged three times more for the water coming off the roof than the clean water going in. That is where financialisation led because the bondholders placed demands on the water company to jack up the charges to get their pound of flesh. The Minister should stop playing the people for fools because they are not, as he will discover tomorrow.

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