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

I am sorry if I missed some of the Minister of State's contribution so I may be repeating myself, but it has been a very long day. I would like the Minister of State to dwell on one point. I asked why the Government was taking this money. Unfortunately, we still do not have the Minister of State's speech so it is very difficult to deal with some of the issues when we do not have that speech in front of us in black and white. Nonetheless, one of the points he made which has brought clarity to the protesters outside, and to others, is that car tax has always been put into paying for water services in local authorities. I was on a local council for 11 years before I came here, so I would be very familiar with the funding of local councils. The Minister of State is right that this is the case and it is also the case that money from the local government fund would have been used for all services, including water services. For many years, those of us on this side of the House who oppose the new water charges have been saying that we have always paid for water and that our taxes have always funded water services. However, the Minister of State said we have been getting it for free. We have not been getting it for free because anyone who pays car tax is paying for water, and, by the way, car tax was increased in the last couple of budgets and my own car tax doubled. People have had to pay more because of the bailout and we now find it is going to Irish Water.

The reason this matters is that Irish Water is going to cost and has cost a lot more than if the water services had been left in the hands of the local councils. We will keep needing bucketfuls and bucketfuls of money to keep this monster well fed because it is like a hungry beast that needs constant food. When local authorities were doing this, it was done in a much more slimmed-down fashion. There were no big bonuses for executives. While I accept that county managers and chief executive officers were very well paid, this was not the case for the ordinary water service worker or engineer, and there was no extra bureaucracy created, such as call centres to answer people's queries. The point is that we are going to keep needing to dip further into the taxes that people pay in order to keep Irish Water going.

The people outside are not happy. The car sticker was mentioned, and I have one here. The phrase on it is, "My car tax pays for my water". This has just been confirmed by what the Minister of State said. People have been paying for water through different taxes for many years whereas the Government has been making out that a tooth fairy was paying for it.

How much more of this are we going to need? The Government will find out that people are not paying the water charges, and I assume they are not because this is 1 July and, at this stage, surely the Government would be shouting it from the rooftops if the payment figures were good. What it is hoping for is that, through this legislation, people will not listen to the fine detail and they will not realise that the civil debt Bill which is coming up, and which we will speak on, is toothless and is designed for the likes of a television licence defaulter rather than a water charge boycott by hundreds and thousands of people. They hope people will not realise they cannot be prosecuted for anything less than €500, so court cases are many years down the road, or that the Government cannot actually dip into their pockets and take this money directly. Later we will deal with a disgraceful proposal to terrify renters who are very vulnerable.

What the Government is trying to do with this legislation is increase the payment figures as much as it possibly can and hold on to the information about it as long as it possibly can. However, it is 1 July and the billing cycle is now finished for everybody. Sooner or later, the information is going to be demanded and we will discover that the Government is going to need to take more funds from taxpayers and other sources to keep the beast of Irish water going. This is because it will not be able to do it from the four sources that were pointed out by my colleague, the first of which is the Department of Social Protection taking it from those like lone parents and giving it back to people in €100 bribes to get them to register.

The second source is car tax. The Minister of State may say also that it is not coming from the property tax but it is, because the Government is cutting the local government funding to local councils and keeping that money. Therefore, it is coming from property taxes and we will probably discover it is coming from other taxes also in the years ahead. On top of this, there is the car tax. There seems to be no end to the funding Irish Water will need in order for the Government to save political face. That is disgraceful.

See this speech in context