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

Anyone would welcome the fact the Minister for Justice and Equality has abolished imprisonment of people for relatively small debts. People should never have gone to prison for not being able to pay a television licence. There was the ridiculous case last year of a woman from Donegal driven to Dublin in a taxi to be jailed in Dublin. This debate is not being held on a normal sitting day. The Bill is focused on the debts of the little people, €500 to €4,000. When will the Government bring forward a Bill to deal with the debts of the big people? Do they just get write-downs, for example, the developers in the National Asset Management Agency, which the previous regime told us would never happen? Denis O’Brien and others in the 1% also get write-downs from banks and Government.

This Bill has been talked about for many years. It has been brought forward to coincide with a mass boycott of the water charges. It will not and cannot deal with a mass boycott campaign. It cannot deal with hundreds of thousands of people refusing on principle to pay a debt and it will not deal with that. The Government hopes the publicity will be enough to give the impression it will, but it is to be hoped the real message will get out. The Minister was somewhat disingenuous in her speech when she referred to the water charges being at quite an early stage because the debt has to be more than €500 and up to €4,000. That would mean it would be at least three years before a single person could be brought to court to have an attachment order granted for non-payment of water charges. For a family it would be more than two years. The earliest anyone could be caught under this Bill for boycotting water charges would be between 2017 and 2019, well after a general election when a new Government will be in place. It is to be hoped water charges will have been abolished at that stage if the campaign is successful.

The Bill makes clear too that water charges cannot be deducted at source. I am glad that possibility is being nailed on the head. They cannot be taken directly from people’s incomes and social welfare. There must be a court process first and every case must be individually heard. A person is entitled to have representations made and his or her finances must be examined and an assessment of affordability must be made. Hundreds of thousands of people are boycotting the water charges. Some day soon we will get the figures. We do not have them yet but we know it has to be hundreds of thousands, on the basis that 30% have not registered and many more who have registered will not pay. They do this as a protest against privatisation, austerity and a political betrayal and broken promise, in particular by the Labour Party. The process set out in this Bill is very clunky. There is no fast-tracking of water charges cases as has been reported in the media. There will be no way to segregate and streamline people and bring them to court. Solicitors have been sending us e-mails and complaints saying there is no way they can deal with this issue. Every case has to be heard in court before an attachment order can be granted. There is no guarantee it will be granted. A judge has discretion to distinguish and not impose an attachment order.

Under section 9, representations can be made and there is a protected earnings rate. The Minister assures us the proposals provide that the debtor’s situation must be assessed by the court deciding on enforceability in order that the attachment of earnings or deduction from social welfare cannot cause him or her undue hardship or encroach on basic income sustainability to ensure basic living costs can still be met by the debtor. I hope this will come to pass. We know the Government has a very stringent interpretation of what people can live on because it decreed this week that people can lose €50, €80 and €100 a week without causing undue hardship. Women in particular will feel this because 96% of lone parents are women.

Every single case involving people taking part in a massive campaign to boycott water charges must be heard; all of their finances must be looked at and they can also appeal. This will be an extremely long drawn out process. There is, therefore, no way that this instrument can deal with a mass campaign of non-payment.

I wish to correct something that was said by a previous speaker. There are no longer water allowances; they were done away with. We now have a flat-rate water charge and water pressure cannot be reduced. It is important that, as Deputies, we give people the correct information. This measure was done away with under pressure of the campaign. As a result, a millionaire will pay the same amount in water charges as a low paid worker, but how can this be just or fair? As a result of fear and the knowledge that people knew that the campaign was going to escalate, the Government had to bring in that measure. However, those engaging in a campaign against water charges have nothing to fear from this legislation, as mass non-payment can sink Irish Water and force a future Government to abolish it.

See this speech in context