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

It says everything about this issue and the water charges debacle that the Minister, who was the chief architect of this complete fiasco, the former Minister, Phil Hogan, was then rewarded by getting what is probably the most senior political position in Europe that this State can confer on an individual. Before he left office this Minister who was rewarded for that fiasco, was busy having secret unminuted meetings with Irish Water to plan the debacle and the fiasco that has ensued. The Government is not concerned, apparently, about these unminuted meetings when they led, by anybody's definition, to a disaster and a fiasco That says it all. Why were the meetings not minuted? What were they discussing?

What they were discussing was how they could obfuscate, spin and lie about the reality of water charges and Irish Water to undermine, defeat and divide the opposition that was already developing and has since assumed massive proportions. They were discussing how they could undermine the opposition, mass protests and boycott that were coming down the line as people took to the streets in unprecedented numbers. We also saw what the meetings were about in the bizarre contribution made by Deputy Rabbitte in which he attempted to intimidate RTE. It was interest that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, made a special appearance for Deputy Rabbitte's contribution and two journalists miraculously appeared in an otherwise empty Press Gallery, having clearly been tipped off by Deputy Rabbitte that he was about to make a statement on RTE. His speech was a deliberate attempt to intimidate the public broadcaster. Similarly, Deputy O'Donovan played the rural-urban divide in his effort to obfuscate and blur the key issue.

Attempts have been made to tarnish the anti-water charges protest movement through associations with violence. The Government is doing everything to obfuscate but the issue is simple - it is not fair to charge a millionaire, a pensioner, a person in receipt of a welfare payment of €188 per week and a worker on the minimum wage the same amount to access a basic human right. Under United Nations conventions, water is a basic human right and it is unfair and fundamentally unjust to charge everyone the same to access it. People know it is wrong that the amount of money a person has should dictate whether he or she has access to a basic human right. They also know from their experience of bin charges and so forth that the Government is lying when it states the charges will stay low. The charge will rocket and any waivers or concessions given now will disappear, just as happened in the past. People know, as Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party knew at the time, that when charges are introduced, privatisation follows, as it did in the case of bin charges.

Rather than acknowledging the legitimate right of people to oppose water charges, the Government wants to distract from the substantive issues and instead divide, undermine and besmirch the overwhelming opposition to water charges. All its plans and spin will not succeed because the rebellion against water charges will continue and the nationwide boycott will prevail.

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