Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In moving the motion on behalf of the Anti-Austerity Alliance and the Socialist Party this evening, we are offering the Government the chance to withdraw the water charges, which are hated and reviled throughout the country. We are also offering it the chance to disband Irish Water. It is a bottomless pit which has eaten up €539 million in water meters, €85 million in consultants and millions more in other expenditure. We are offering the Government the chance to retreat in an organised fashion from this debacle and to pull back its troops, in a disciplined way, from a battle it is clearly losing.

The Government has made many mistakes. One of them, of late, is believing its own propaganda that people had accepted the discounted water charges introduced in a panic last November and that somehow the protest movement had ebbed and retreated and is now a small group. Since when has tens of thousands of people filling up O'Connell Street during a Triple Crown victory been a protest movement in retreat or dwindling?

The Minister, Deputy Kelly, yesterday claimed that people were now coming on board and that they were jumping onto the water charges train. If people are jumping on board, why did the Minister feel it necessary to push them today by issuing threats of deduction at source of the water charges, a threat which the Minister knows is idle? The water charges have become a lightning conductor for the suffering by ordinary people of six years of austerity in this country. In many ways, the charges are no worse than other austerity measures which proceeded them, such as the universal social charge, the property tax and the housing and mortgage debt which has been left hanging around people's necks. However, there is one major difference with the water charges. People have control over them and we can win on this issue. People have the power to withhold payment and to engage in a mass campaign of civil disobedience, without needing the permission of anyone such as a trade union leader or anyone else.

The Minister, Deputy Kelly, spoke of fairness and said that everyone must pay and make a contribution. The water charges are a highly regressive measure. A millionaire pays the same as a minimum wage worker. How can this be considered in any way progressive? In the budget in 2015, the Government saw fit to give a tax cut of €405 million to the top 17% of earners and to levy a water charge of €290 million on the rest of us. We have tax cuts for the wealthy and water charges for the poorest. The water charges can never be fair or democratic. The Minister was out bullying and threatening today but he said something different four years ago when he opposed water charges and got elected on that basis.

People have marched. People have been demonised by this Government and have been arrested and jailed. Now people have to use the best and only way we have to win and get the water charges abolished. That is a mass collective refusal to pay the bills in one week's time. This is essential to defeat the water charges and to make Irish Water financially unviable, to deprive it of revenue and to make it politically impossible for this or a future Government to maintain the water charges.

A general election is most likely to occur in a year's time when non-payment of water charges could be at its peak. Four or five households out of every ten canvassed by Government parties might not be paying and many others might also oppose the charges. After one year of non-payment, a new Government will have to abolish the water charges. Let us be clear. Regardless of the promises of parties to the effect that they will abolish the charges, a new Government will maintain them if people have been paying. It will have its arm twisted and come under the same pressure from the troika that the current Government has for the past six years with arguments about having spent a great deal of money etc. Mass non-payment of bills will render those threats useless. There are no penalties for one year and three months of non-payment. Nothing can happen until after a full year of non-payment, by which time there will have been a general election.

At the 11th hour today, the Minister and some in the compliant media, owned by billionaires, some of whom have a vested interest in pursuing the water charges agenda, have put out the spin that new legislation is being introduced to deduct water charges at source. The water charge is a utility, not a tax. If the Government wants to deduct utility bills from people's earnings, it will have to bring major legislation through the House. Even if it does so, it will have to bring people to court and persuade judges to impose attachment orders on their wages or welfare payments. How can this or any Government bring 500,000 or even 1 million non-payers through the courts? It would be impossible. This is why mass non-payment is key to abolishing the charges.

If the Minister dares to tinker with this legislation for a third time or to introduce such a law, other utilities might as well get into the queue - Electric Ireland, the television licence and Bord Gáis. A precedent will have been set by the Government deducting payment for bills that people cannot afford from their earnings. The threat that we saw in today's Irish Independentabout fast-tracking court hearings to address this issue is in contrast with the Government's hands-off attitude towards the bankers, developers and wealthy who brought this country to ruin. There were no fast-tracked courts, or any court, for them.

The Government's big brother approach, for example, turning landlords and councils into debt collectors for Irish Water, is obscene. I received two letters today from council tenants. One is 80 years old and, like many, is a tenant of a housing agency, in this case Túath Housing. He had received a letter to the effect that his details had to be handed over by the housing agency and that, if he did not pay his bill, he would not be in fulfilment of his tenancy agreement. In other words, it was threatening an elderly man with eviction. This is outrageous carry-on by the Government. I was also sent a letter from someone who had received it from Clúid, which is legally bound to pass over its tenants' details. It is unbelievable that people, the very ones that the Labour Party in particular promised to protect, are being scared.

I have one or two words for the Labour Party. Its treachery towards working class people knows no bounds. Neither does its political stupidity, in that it has taken on the most savage roles in government - water, the housing crisis and the Ministry of social destruction. Today's threats are its obituary. People are reacting in outrage at the contrast in treatment between ordinary people and the well-heeled in society. The Labour Party deserves everything that is coming its way. The Minister has threatened the poorest people. Four years ago, the Labour Party said it was going to protect people from Fine Gael cuts-----

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