Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Law Reform Commission presented its proposals on this issue in 2010, long before Irish Water was even conceived and before the last general election. What was proposed was not the same as that being presented which is being presented in tandem with other legislation this week to create a connection between the two.

I am in favour of jailing people who are a threat to society. There must be sanctions, but where people are not a threat to society, they should not be in prison. There are people who are a threat to society for whom there are no sanctions. Maintaining prisons is very expensive. The Irish Penal Reform Trust calculated that the average cost of an available staffed prison space in 2014 was €69,000. It is, therefore, a very expensive option, particularly when one is looking at relatively small personal debts such as a television licence fee. Deputy Ruth Coppinger reminded us of the case last year of a woman in County Donegal who had to abandon her children and have them minded when she was sent to prison. I think they were minded by a social worker, which added to the cost. The woman in question had to be driven by taxi to the Dóchas Centre because of a failure to pay her television licence fee. People were outraged by this. It was not that they were saying there should be no sanction but that the sanction was not balanced, correct or civilised.

We see individuals who have done untold damage to this society and directly damaged people's lives, the economy and available public services and who are walking away scot-free because of the lack of the sanctions we need at the other end of the scale. Where there are sanctions provided for, one wonders about the ability to enforce them. Look at the number of staff in the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement or the Competition Authority. Significant white collar crimes are not being prosecuted. I tried to make a complaint about possible insider trading. I wrote to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, the Central Bank and the Irish Stock Exchange, but it seems that none of them was required to sanction or even consider what was I saying and we wonder why there has never been a prosecution for insider trading. Effectively, there is no one to whom one can complain. This demonstrates very clearly that there are two sets of rules.

We know that the courts are unable to cope. Funding for the Courts Service has been cut by 25% since 2008. The service has shed about 160 staff and case loads are enormous. I know that there have been some changes and that we now have a Court of Appeal, but the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mrs. Justice Susan Denham, said last year that any further cut would do great and lasting harm to the administration of justice. It is one thing to cut the budgets and ability of the courts to deal with things, but it is another to put through a significant number of additional cases. That is where Irish Water enters the picture. When the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government spoke about the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2015 this week, he said:

In tandem with these amendments, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Fitzgerald, published the Civil Debt (Procedures) Bill yesterday. The Bill seeks to implement the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission's report on the enforcement of debt, principally around the streamlining of existing enforcement procedures. Under the Bill, creditors will be able to apply to the court for an order enabling either attachment of earnings or deductions from social welfare payments, as appropriate, for the purpose of enforcement of debt. This important change will be accompanied by a crucial safeguard: the abolition of imprisonment of debtors, except in the case of maintenance arising from family law proceedings. This, I believe, represents a balanced approach to the recovery of civil debt so that creditor rights are protected with a range of legal mechanisms which compel payment by those debtors who will not pay, while removing the outdated threat of imprisonment in such cases. The legislation supports the distinction between the "can pay but won't pay" debtors and those who are willing to pay but are in financial difficulty, a distinction that is crucial in implementing the underlying fairness aspect of domestic water charges.

It is clearly linking it with Irish Water. In many ways, it is giving the impression that there is an immediate sanction through this Bill that bypasses the courts when that is not the case. A Government that does not command the authority of citizens does not have the right to govern. The Government will tell us otherwise, but a significant campaign of civil disobedience is taking place in respect of Irish Water. This is not the way to deal with it. Something has been said about the limits to which people have been pushed. Even though there are good elements in this legislation, I cannot see myself being in a position to support it because of the link with Irish Water that it creates.

I want to raise the issue of orders attached to social welfare payments.

I recall a constituent who came to my office who wanted to pay the household charge but did not have a credit card. He was trying to find the cheapest way to pay and wanted to pay through the post office. However, he found if he paid it on a monthly basis through the post office, it would cost him an extra €12 because of the €1 fee for each transaction. He thought then that he would go to the Department of Social Protection and ask it to deduct the charge. The Department's response was that the customer should note that the Department would apply provisions under social welfare legislation to ensure a person's basic means are sufficient and would not, therefore, make deductions that would bring a payment below the personal rate of supplementary welfare allowance, currently set at €186 per week. Therefore, the Department would not deduct the household charge because that would reduce his payment to below €186 per week, yet an attachment order can be made in regard to an Irish Water debt. Is there a paradox there? The Departments seem to be tripping each other up on this point, that there is a requirement for a basic income.

We need to get real on whether a basic income is needed and guaranteed and this must be factored into the legislation as a certainty. A similar situation occurs in regard to maintenance payments where the payment can be deducted from a welfare payment or where there is a requirement to pay it that brings people below the bare minimum required for existence. These issues are very real for people living in a marginal situation and they have not been properly thought through.

On the campaign of civil disobedience in regard to the water charges, I have said on numerous occasions that what is going on in regard to Irish Water-----

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