Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the platitudes of the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, are new politics, I am very happy to be a dinosaur because there is nothing new in anything he said. In reality, it represents him and the Government again being completely out of touch. He tells us these are complex issues the people would not understand and that we should give them to the commission, which will advise and come back to it. It actually is not complex at all. The people have spoken on this issue. These charges never had a mandate. The previous Government committed electoral fraud by bringing them in. The Minister can test that. They said in the 2011 election that they would not bring them in until there was metering. The Labour Party said it would not bring them in at all. It is a simple fact that the people on this side of the House said, "Vote for us and we will get rid of Irish Water and the other items in this motion", so what are we waiting for?

The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, tells us that if we do not get this money we will not have funding to pay for other areas. How dare he say that when the previous Government stood over the right-off of €400 million to the top 17% of income earners in the budget in 2014 and when the Minister, Deputy Noonan, goes begging for Apple not to have to pay its taxes in this country?

If the Government wants to save money, it should tell Irish Water to stop sending out their stupid letters like the one I got about the extra charges because it will take more than the threat of extra charges or a Minister of State to get people on this side of the House to pay their charges. We are not unique. The overwhelming majority of citizens, if they were conned into paying, have stopped paying now. If the Minister wants to save money, stop the metering.

The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, is correct. District water metering is a conservation measure. Household water metering is a pre-privatisation strategic move.

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