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

The sort of skulduggery at the back of this amendment and the various other amendments brought forward at the last minute to circumvent the normal process of legislative scrutiny and oversight is precisely what has brought people to the streets this evening and precisely what has brought unprecedented numbers onto the streets in fury and anger during the past year. They are there because of the unfairness and economic hardship of austerity, which is unbearable for vast numbers of people. It has plunged people into poverty, greater levels of deprivation and homelessness and needless suffering. That is one aspect of the anger and fury that has led people onto the streets, for the information of Deputy Shatter.

The other aspect is the utter contempt for democracy and the playing fast and loose with the entire democratic process, inadequate as it is in the first place. We have an election every five years but the people we elect can then shred all the promises they made. They are completely unaccountable and there is nothing the people who voted for them can do about it. If that is not bad enough, the Government wants to subvert even the utterly limited form of democracy we have. This amendment highlights what the Government is at.

In fact, this amendment is bigger news than the points we initially highlighted when we cottoned on the day before the Government submitted these amendments last week. At that stage the Government was pulling a fast one. It started to get the word out to the media and the public that it was up to no good and that it intended to smuggle through what is essentially a new Bill on water charges in a Bill which, when it was initiated in this House, had nothing to do with water charges.

In the short time we had to scan the Bill and work out precisely what is in it, we spotted some of the measures the Government knew would be controversial. The Government started to get the message out over the weekend. I admit I did not spot this amendment. Only more recently did I spot it. This is actually the worst of them and the most controversial. Of course, that is why the Government did it. The Government knew this would be controversial and it sought to hide these measures and smuggle them in under another Bill.

This extends the situation that has absolutely infuriated people. The property tax was unfair, regressive and unjust. People resisted it. As if all that was not bad enough, it is now going to finance Irish Water, as will the motor tax that people have paid. These are precisely the issues that have driven people onto the streets in unprecedented numbers. These taxes are being used to finance Irish Water. People are paying through the neck with a regressive tax to finance a new utility that is going to make the same people pay through the neck with another regressive tax. It was supposed to be for one year. Now, the Government is extending it for a second year in breach of a previous commitment. Most people do not know that. Fully €500 million is at issue here. This is big money.

When Deputy Stanley and Deputy Murphy listed the various sources of finance for Irish Water, including motor tax, local property tax, raiding or stealing money from lone parents in the social protection budget and squeezing and trying to terrorise householders, they missed out another source of finance which is costing all of us. That is the fact that this is all on balance sheet, that is, the State is borrowing extra money and paying interest to do this, a point confirmed to me by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. The representative from the body to whom I spoke pointed out that our deficit is increased by the costs of Irish Water. The Government, which has savaged people in the name of reducing the deficit because of the demands of the troika, does not mind increasing the deficit or increasing borrowing and the interest we have to pay to set up Irish Water. This really exposes what those in government are up to. They claim it is all about meeting the targets, deficit reduction and reducing the debt when it comes to justifying the assault on working people. However, when it comes to setting up Irish Water to squeeze people and enrich contractors like Denis O'Brien, it is no problem. In that scenario the Government can inflate the deficit and pay interest on it.

The representative of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council made clear, if there be any doubt at all, that the Government will be required to ratchet up the charges to two, three or four times the current level. This was confirmed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, which is not a left-wing think tank by any means. It is an oversight body of economists set up by the troika and established in law by the Government. The representative confirmed that to reduce the deficit, Irish Water will have to generate more money itself. This means ratcheting up the charges as soon as the Government can get over the line - if it can get over the line - of the next general election. That is what the Government is up to with these amendments. That is what the Government has been up to with its entire strategy of dealing with the fury, anger and protest against these unjust charges. It is altogether misleading. I am not allowed to say it is a lie so I will say it is deliberately, cynically misleading. With this strategy the Government is hiding, denying and covering up its real intent.

It is heading towards a charge of €600 or €700 per year, which will be required as part of the deficit-reduction plan to which the Government is committed. In fact, the Government will be under pressure from the troika to meet this objective. This year we will be borrowing more and spending more to finance the monster that is Irish Water in order to put the squeeze on ordinary people.

Deputy Stanley is absolutely correct that when people are paying their utility bills, they do not expect that their money will be going towards financing a quango. I will add a footnote to that: we actually do finance quangos when we pay our electricity bills because we do so through the public service obligation charge, much of which is going into the hands of private companies in the so-called wind energy business. The money is not actually going towards the production of energy for us but it is to make profit for the private sector. In that sense, the approach to Irish Water is completely consistent with what the Government is doing, namely, setting up various utilities or trying to funnel money into the pockets of private companies or entities it hopes will be soon private.

Let me respond to the Minister of State's attempt to justify all this, the manner in which he has brought in this legislation and his denial that he has been playing fast and loose with the democratic process. He quoted the words of Minister of State Deputy Ann Phelan on these amendments on Committee Stage. He omitted to mention the fact that she made her point at the end of Committee Stage when it was over. There was no chance to discuss the matter. Second, Minister of State Deputy Ann Phelan said the amendments would be published in good time. They were not published in good time. As soon as it became clear to me and my office that apparently technical amendments concerning water were going to be brought forward, I started to ring the Bills Office to ask for them, but there was no sign of them. I am sure it was the same for other Deputies. I kept ringing and, in the approach to the final deadline for submitting Report Stage amendments, I asked where were the Government amendments. At 11 a.m., the deadline by which we had to have our amendments submitted, we could not see the Government amendments. We did not see them until mid-afternoon after the deadline had passed for us.

Minister of State Deputy Paudie Coffey said these issues were "well flagged". I congratulate his spin doctors on that phrase. He managed to get every single correspondent to repeat it, on RTE, in The Irish Timesand in all the other media. The expression "well flagged" was straight from the Minister of State's press release to the national media. If the issues were so well flagged, why was the proposal not contained in the original Bill? The Government obviously had the legislation and knew exactly what it was going to do. Is the Minister of State saying the Government did not bother to draft the legislation until, say, last Thursday, although the issues were so well flagged since the end of last year? When was it actually drafted? Perhaps we should submit a freedom of information request on that. Could the Minister of State answer the question? The legislation, or the majority of it, had to have been drafted some considerable time before the deadline of 11 a.m. last Thursday. It was a fast one. The Minister of State knows it was a fast one and that is why he is smiling. It is why the Chief Whip, Deputy Paul Kehoe, stated last week when this was pointed out to him that one would want to get up in the morning early to fool us. He had a big smile on his face. It was all a bit of a laugh to him that the Government was playing a trick on the Dáil and the public. Perhaps that is the way business has been done in here for years. I am here for only the past four years.

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