Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry I was late for the debate. I was visiting Coolock, one of the communities at the heart of the resistance to water charges. Having returned to the House, I am sorry I did not stay because the reality of life in working class communities in Dublin, districts and towns and villages of this country is a million miles away from some of the nonsense that has spewed from the Government benches. It does not give me any pleasure to point out that most of this nonsense has emanated from the mouths of Deputies from the Labour Party, which has become the whipping boy of the Government. Where are their Blueshirt Fine Gael colleagues?

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government led the charge last night, while other Labour Party Ministers who are not even in that Department took up the challenge today. I did not hear Deputy Rabbitte's contribution but I am aware that his stunt has successfully grabbed the headlines in the media coverage of this debate. The Deputy will rue the day he made his comments. While he may believe he can compare people to rats following a pied piper, his statement belies a lack of understanding of the real battle that is taking place in communities around the country. People are not following anybody but listening to their own instincts and an understanding born of direct experience that unless they make a stand on this issue, they will be faced with monstrous bills in future and the real prospect of the public water supply being privatised.

I refer to the conduct last night of the Minister when he got up and lectured people. He talked about how people had to understand the need to pay for things. How dare he propose to put that message to people? Irish people know that. They have paid for public services through the central taxation system. They have paid through the highest form of indirect taxation in Europe, which means the poorest people pay the most. That the Government has decided to embark on being Robin Hood in reverse by using people's taxes to pay the debts of others that never were the responsibility of ordinary people is an absolute and utter disgrace. Where does the Government think the public water supply came from in the first place? It came off the backs of taxpayers. Where does the Government think the reduction in leakages in areas such as South Dublin, which council was able to implement double-figure reductions, came from? It came from investment by the State. The Government talks about savings being made, but is it not aware that savings being made in Ringsend are being made not because of efficiencies but because the plant is cutting out best practice environmental considerations and is doing only half the job promised? The Government's figures and information do not stack up.

It is not the only point on which the Government is contradicting itself because, on the one hand, one supposed to believe everybody is coming over to its point of view and that people are happily signing up and see the logic in this scenario. On the other, the Government is moving into vicious forms of threats and intimidation because it knows that it has lost the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary people in this regard. Threatening letters are being sent to warn people in the voluntary housing sector in organisations such as Clúid, for example. I was contacted by a group of tenants from Drogheda this morning, including a family of six in a two-bedroom apartment, a Vietnamese woman in a basement and a family in another dwelling in between, who had received letters telling them the terms of their tenancy meant they had to pay this charge. How, when local authorities are facing challenges in Europe over the condition of local authority houses, are they meant to go into the business of collecting and be water charges collectors also? It is an absolute impossibility.

The reality is the Government cannot rule against the will of the people and that it does not have the will of the people in this regard. I believe it knows this-----

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