Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is eight years since the economic crash, an event of such magnitude that it was supposed to herald new ways of doing the State's business and for a while it did. The two largest parties in the State at the subsequent general election agreed to form a Government and negotiated a programme for same within one week. They worked together for five difficult years to ensure Ireland's economic recovery. As the publication, the stability programme update, SPU, attests, they brought us to a place where we could for the first time in seven years confidently plan for our future. It was said the most recent election result replaced old politics with new politics. It did nothing of the sort. What we have witnessed in the past 60 days is self-interest over national interest, old politics at its very worst, the kind of politics that led us into the economic crash in the first place.

The establishment of Irish Water was not conceived to be popular. As the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government stated, it had its origins in a Fianna Fáil commitment to the troika to establish such a utility. That commitment waived our derogation from water charges under the wastewater directive, but it was also the right thing to do. We all know that our water and wastewater treatment systems have not been fit for purpose for decades. They are certainly not fit for the challenges we face in the 21st century in a modern, First World economy, the people in which are entitled to clean and decently treated water and the protection of groundwater.

Historically, water provision has been underfunded. It does not have the same visibility as the factors that compete in my Department for scarce funding: schools, hospitals, houses, day care centres and so on. Who can envisage in a competition with new cancer wards or children's facilities sewage treatment facilities ever coming top of the list? We all know this and it has gone on for decades.

The utility model addressed this issue by allowing Irish Water access to non-Exchequer funds. That was the idea behind it. As with the ESB and Bord Gáis Energy, it was to be a commercial company that could access funds that would not be on the State’s balance sheet and invest the billions of euro needed to bring our wastewater treatment and water supply infrastructure up to normal European standards. A successful market corporation test was not impossible and was actually achievable. EUROSTAT stated "No", but the Central Statistics Office, CSO, stated "Yes". In my experience - I am around quite a while, as the Chairman knows - this was the first time EUROSTAT had actually overruled the CSO, which, basically, is the Irish subset of the European statistics body. If we had been given the okay by EUROSTAT, we would have had even greater access to cheaper funding. Owing to the improvements we set out this morning in the SPU, we can now borrow, as a state, at a rate of less than 1%. State bodies and companies such as the ESB share the benefits of this low interest rate because of Ireland’s success.

If what I read in the newspaper is true, water provision is now to compete once again with other pressing demands for funding. As I stated, in a competition between a cancer ward and a sewage treatment plant what will lose out? A treatment plant and investment in water systems have no prospect of being successful.

It is understandable that the imposition of domestic water charges following a period of very painful fiscal consolidation was going to be unpopular. The public was fortunate that Fianna Fáil was not in a position to proceed with its planned annual household charge of €400, but it did take us some time to get the model right. We did act too swiftly because of the pressure exerted on us by the troika. I can attest to this at first hand because I had to meet representatives of the troika every three months to go through our scorecard with them before they released the money to pay pensions and make social welfare payments and meet public sector pay bills. Every three months we awaited the troika’s scrutiny and oversight as we lost domestic control over our own finances.

Consider the water charges we have in place, despite all the rhetoric. I listened to statements about the calamitous imposition on ordinary people. God knows, there have been calamitous impositions on them in recent years, the most egregious being the loss of 300,000 jobs and the sending of 100,000 people abroad. That was calamitous. To put it bluntly, a charge of €3 a week on a household does not fit into that category. I am not, however, wedded to the system. We could make further adjustments. We should allow households a generous allowance and charge only for water wasted or abused. However, what is now being discussed is dishonest. If charging is abandoned, it will be gone for good. The law-abiding citizens who paid the charges, whether they agreed with them, and who accepted the law of the land will be penalised for their loyalty. It would be a poor lesson in a country that drove itself to the brink of viability a few short years ago by pursuing short-term opportunities over long-term planning. It is no accident that this is being driven by the same party that was responsible for the economic catastrophe out of which the country has now crawled its way painfully. If the lesson we should have learned from the economic crisis was to think long term and reduce the temptation to court popularity at the cost of the nation’s long-term needs, it is amazing how quickly we have unlearned it. Deputy Micheál Martin, above all others in this House, knows that well.

My colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Simon Coveney, told the House today that water charges, under the draft agreement being put together by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, would be put on hold. He knows the truth of that statement. Everybody in the House knows it. “On hold” means "finished and abandoned". It is a policy that I know runs contrary to the views of every Fine Gael Front Bencher. How do I know that? I know it because they told me so trenchantly for the past five years. It has been our policy as a Government to do the right thing. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, and I guaranteed each other on the first day we held our seals of office that we would do the right thing, even if it was not the easy thing to do. An election should not change that fundamental principle.

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