Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I was outside at the protest and I spoke at it. I can inform the House, which may have been misinformed, that there was no sign of any fascists. In fact, there were Greek flags, Irish flags, banners and placards against the water charges and placards declaring Okhí which means "No" in Greece. It was a protest of the anti-water charges movement, protesting against the despicable manner in which this legislation is being processed, the way a new Bill has been rammed into an old Bill in the form of amendments in order to avoid any sort of basic democratic parliamentary process. They are protesting against the same but much larger process which is happening Greece, whereby attempted regime change is taking place with the instruments of financial terror, of bullying, of tyranny, of the troika. That is what is happening outside. I would strongly urge the Members of this House to go outside to meet some of the people who are outside, to make their own judgment as to whether they are fascists or perhaps ISIS or whatever particular scare-mongering word one wishes to choose, and to investigate the situation. I urge them to talk to the people and establish what are their grievances. I think they would indicate to the Government that the Government has made a grave error by avoiding the democratic process of debate in the way it is doing with this farce of a procedure, which is effectively avoiding Committee Stage.

The Government has made a big mistake. It is angering people more than they would have if it had just gone through the normal process. People would have grimaced and bore the reality that in this parliamentary democracy people are elected with whom one may not agree and even though they are in a minority, they must at some stage listen to them, allow their amendments to be heard in committee, to be discussed and then they can be voted down. If the Government was not in such haste to get this Bill through, if it was not in such haste to avoid a public discussion, to avoid a discussion in this House, then it could have gone about it in another way and it would not have paid the price that it will pay for this.

In his response the Minister of State said something very revealing, which gets to the heart of this amendment and this issue. He said that motor tax always paid for water. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I thought the Government's argument was that we have not paid for water. Those of us on this side of the House who are opposed to water charges have always said we already pay for water. What is the position? Has motor tax always paid for water? Is it possibly the case that we have already paid for water through our general taxation and through our motor tax? If that is so, surely the Government's case for water charges has just collapsed in this debate this evening because its key argument has been that people have to pay their water charges. That is what Government Members say repeatedly in this Chamber, on the radio and on television. However, the Minister of State has said this evening that motor tax always paid for water services. So it was not free and we already paid for it.

That begs the question as to what will happen to the motor tax when we have the water charges. Will the motor tax be reduced because now we are going to pay for it again? Is the Government seriously suggesting that we will pay for water twice? That is what we argued but the Government claimed it was not a question of double taxation. It said we had to pay for our water. However, the Minister of State's response illustrates that we already paid for water. There is no proposal to reduce motor tax or any other general taxation and then we will have water charges on top of that. This is an admission by the Government that it wants people to pay for water twice.

Why does it want people to pay for water twice? There are two key reasons. First, it is revenue raising but not now, this year, next year or the year after because it will be revenue losing for those years, but it is establishing another revenue stream for Irish Water, which therefore the Government does not have to spend whenever the full charges become effective in 2019, of €200 per adult per year on average based on usage of 148 litres per person per day. That is the first reason.

The Government can deny it and it can create non-binding requirements on itself to have referendums before doing it all it likes but the other agenda is privatisation. There is no other explanation for why it has invested so much political capital and why the Labour Party has been willing to face such losses over this issue but to continue all the way like a soldier directed by a general to run towards the enemy trenches. The only explanation is that the medium to long-term agenda is privatisation of our water services, facilitated by the amendment and the potential handing over of money to Irish Water. That can be done in many different ways. It is already happening now from below in the water services, in Irish Water, with design, build and operate contracts on a for-profit basis going to major water multinationals such as Veolia, Suez and Thames.

It will also happen very quickly if the Government, in spite of this amendment, were to pass the EUROSTAT test and have this off-balance sheet funding, which means going to the international markets and borrowing at a higher rate than the rate at which the State is capable of borrowing. It means borrowing from bondholders, who are the people who lend money on these international markets. It means effectively therefore privatising the revenue stream from the water charges to these people.

People in Ireland who have followed this debate may be aware of Detroit Water, which disconnected approximately 30,000 people. We all said that was because of the privatisation of Detroit Water, which is accurate. However, it is also accurate that Detroit Water was under the ownership of the city council and it had the same model of fund-raising that Irish Water has. It was officially publicly owned but then raised money through the bond markets through the effective privatisation of the revenue streams. Then the bondholders say, "We're not getting enough money. We're not getting our money back. You have to be harder. You have to disconnect people. You have to incentivise people to pay their water charges so that we can get our money back". The same process could happen here.

In the medium to long-term I believe we will see full privatisation of Irish Water and full privatisation of our water services. The dark forces that are circling, as mentioned by a former Minister, want access to this. It is part of an agenda that comes from the troika. We can look to Greece in terms of the ruthless pursuit of agendas that take place. The troika agreement with Ireland contained water charges, arguably a precursor to water privatisation. The Government was delighted to discover that water charges already existed in Greece and Portugal.

Water privatisation was included in the troika agreements where it could be. Where it could not, the process started with charges which lead inexorably towards privatisation. So they want privatisation. The big multinationals want privatisation. I would be fairly sure that people such as Mr. Denis O'Brien would like privatisation. That is where this fundamentally leads. Through this amendment and other means, the Government is interested in fattening up Irish Water for privatisation at some stage down the road and people will suffer the consequences. The present Government parties may not be in power; it could be a different Government.

The problem the Government has, as reflected in this debate, is that people are watching these things. In the past the Government or Fianna Fáil might have got away with this kind of stroke politics in how it treats the Dáil and shows basic respect for parliamentary democracy. However, people have been turned on to politics and are even watching the Dáil in a way that did not happen previously. Therefore, people know what is going on and when the Government does things like this, people mobilise and come out to protest, as they are at the moment. People will continue to do so and they will see through the falsehoods and scaremongering promulgated by the Government, and they will understand that if they stand firm together, the water charges can be defeated. While we will do our best in these debates, ultimately the Government has a majority in here, but out there the majority is more important if people are mobilised. I think people are mobilised and therefore this measure can be defeated even if it is passed by the House this evening.

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