Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

All the points I am raising are relevant.

While the expected average water bill per household will be €240 per year in 2015, this figure is expected to increase over time. As with bin charges, there is no doubt that water charges will increase every year. As has been noted elsewhere, Irish Water will ultimately be sold off as a State asset making it a for-profit essential service, as has occurred in many other countries.

Water conservation is not the real reason for the introduction of water charges. If the Government was genuinely concerned about the conservation of water, it would invest in fixing and upgrading water infrastructure. The real reason for water charges is to turn an essential service into a profit-making commodity.

In his previous role as Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and chief aide to the Taoiseach, the current European Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Phil Hogan, publicly stated:

Everybody will pay based on water usage. For people who do not pay, their water pressure will be turned down to a trickle for basic human reasons and that won't be too attractive for them.

Once water supply falls into the hands of corporations or for-profit enterprises, the obvious next step is to cut or eradicate all allowances or credits, leading to increasing prices and deteriorating services. The privatisation of industries such as waste management provides clear evidence of what happens when corporations take control of public services. Water charges will increase in the coming years as a result of the introduction of economic charging, as the Government itself has admitted. With poverty and deprivation rates approaching an all-time high, the homelessness crisis growing and households in mortgage arrears across the State, the introduction of water charges will tip many people over the edge.

Low income families who cannot pay their bills will suffer most and are most at risk. Does the Government not realise the financial and psychological effects increasing debts will have? It is particularly disturbing to see the Labour Party weigh in so forcefully behind proposals to implement further measures that will attack the lives of the most vulnerable. We have only recently witnessed ambivalence and ignorance being shown when calls were made to halt cuts in the one-parent family payment which will affect 12,000 families.

This Bill is yet another measure in the long line of draconian proposals presented by this Government. Its consequences, it is argued, are the result of bad and irresponsible personal choices. A person who chooses not to pay the charge will be found and penalised, while anyone who chooses not to get a job will have his or her payments cut. It is as if the struggles people are facing to survive were about choice.

As Sinn Féin's spokesperson on children and youth affairs, it is my duty to point out the obvious and uncomfortable point the Government does not want to acknowledge. It is continuing to impact on the lives of children in low income families with its resolute commitment to austerity and decisions and choices it has made, including in this Bill. It is hindering the lives of those who are experiencing hardship by continuing a never-ending cycle of poverty creation. We live in a society in which the shameful reality is that 138,000 children are living in persistent poverty, 1,000 minors are living in emergency accommodation and the housing crisis is worsening daily. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of children living both at risk of poverty and in consistent poverty jumped from 6% to 12%. This means one in eight children is experiencing material deprivation on a daily basis. In addition, 63% of one-parent families are living without basic necessities, one-parent families are at heightened risk of homelessness and 60% of households seeking urgent housing assistance are one-parent families. This is the context in which the Government, including the Tánaiste and leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Joan Burton, wishes to introduce savage cuts to payments for one-parent families and in which we are being told that financially strapped citizens and families must pay water charge debts.

On the one hand, we have the imposition of cuts, while, on the other, we have the imposition of debts. In only one week, we have seen the culmination of two incredibly short-sighted dangerous decisions from a child poverty perspective. It is irresponsible of the Government to implement these decisions as it does not require a genius to figure out where the equation, cuts plus debts, leads us. We are told the cuts are being introduced to encourage lone parents to enter employment or education. Almost 12,000 parents, many of them already in employment, will lose up to €86 per week under the cuts to the one-parent family payment.

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