Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabh mo leithscéal. While much of the focus has been on water charges, this Bill presents major concerns for low paid people regarding their ability to maintain the most basic domestic services. With the increase of private companies involved in the provision of electricity, gas and refuse services, we will see this legislation being used aggressively against people who are struggling to survive. While the ESB and Bord Gáis are more likely to work with people in arrears, I fear that private energy and waste companies will see this legislation as a tool to wring dry their customers, who are falling behind in their payments simply because they are living in poverty. There is no doubt there is a lack of procedures in the Bill for the resolution of such issues outside of court. There is also no fair appeals mechanism. Debtors can only seek to have orders altered.

I also want to address the wider move by the Government to create an environment of fear and uncertainty among tenants to bully them into paying the water charges. The Government has not only done nothing to help private residential tenants, but has taken a number of steps that have severely hurt this group of people, leaving some homeless. It has cut rent supplement to a level well below the market rates, forcing tenants to pay under the table or lose their homes. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, wants us all to believe working class people are welfare fraudsters, but the biggest and most widespread form of welfare fraud is encouraged and ignored by the Government, namely, the additional payments made by tenants to landlords above rent supplement levels. The Government solution to the problem was to introduce the housing assistance payment, HAP, which pays landlords less, but makes it harder for tenants to supplement the payment. At the same time, it removes these tenants from social housing lists and claims that as a victory, despite the fact the only change in the tenant's circumstances being increased instability.

The Government has also completely failed to tackle the issue of high rents, promising rent certainty. However, with less than a fortnight to go to the recess, no Bill has been produced. Rents are increasing month on month and tenants are struggling. Now they will have to pay the water charges or face the possibility of being evicted or of losing out on their security deposit. The Government's message is clear. If people do not want to be thrown on the scrap heap, as happened to so many other tenants in the past four years, they better comply. Legislation that will take these unfair water charges from tenants who are already struggling with astronomical rents and high bills will cause further hardship and suffering for low paid workers and the unemployed.

Maybe if the Government had tried to tackle the problems which are bleeding the poor dry, sought rent certainty four years ago or built social housing, the low-paid workers and unemployed people would have the money to think about paying water charges. To think otherwise is to accept that the people know the charges are unfair and unacceptable or to admit those who will not pay mostly do so because they cannot pay. Maybe the Government could have spent a little more time dealing with the nearly 250,000 children in poverty rather than toing and froing about when it would finally try to force people to pay unfair charges by taking money from source.

It is contemptible how the Government has approached the Bill so late in the day and put it forward so hastily under the cover of Law Reform Commission recommendations when the truth is that it is a grubby attempt to push through water charges which have failed the test of public opinion so miserably. Government Deputies may go home today thinking they have got one over on the people, that they have struck a blow against the anti-austerity movement, but they would be fooling themselves. In every community throughout the State, people have stood up and organised. They have worked with political parties and independently to oppose the meters and charges and expose the unfairness of the scheme and the corrupt nature of the affair. They have marched in every town. They have filled the broad streets of Dublin and their cries have risen above the gates of Leinster House, unavoidable by those inside. They will not be beaten by legislation. They will put paid to the Government, water charges and the entire austerity agenda.

A Rubicon has been crossed. We have never gone down this road before. The Labour Party said it would never go down this road. Many Labour Party Deputies told me in conversation they would never go down this road. It opens the door for utility companies and multinationals to apply for court orders enabling the attachment of earnings or deductions from social welfare for enforcement of a debt between €500 and €4,000. The protected earnings rate does not take into account the percentage that can be taken from people's wages. It could apply to old people and those in receipt of social welfare. The rules were clearly laid out by the Government in the past. How will it overcome this? It will place attachment orders on senior citizens who have bought their homes and who live in their communities. How will it do this?

While the abolition of the imprisonment of debtors is welcome, it does not take away from the effects of the Bill. The Government is afraid of a protest as we approach the general election. It is afraid of people marching on the streets. The anti-water charges movement in my area, Dublin North-West, is very strong, the people are very strong and many of them are not paying. Many of them cannot pay, and there are those who support them. It does not matter whether I can pay. People are already paying for water through other charges.

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