Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Anyone elected on 26 February should have realised that water charges were done. They should have been abolished in a democratic acceptance of what the people had been saying for two years. On 26 February, people went out with their pencils in their hands and voted in the majority of Deputies to abolish water charges. That message to the Government could not have been any clearer. The Government could have played around with the idea that there were 50,000, 30,000 or 10,000 people on the streets for the water protests when we knew that there were 110,000, but the vote was a clear message to anyone setting up a Government to the effect that water charges had to go.

We are back in a farcical situation. Fianna Fáil instigated water charges in the 1990s. A Labour Party-Fine Gael Government abolished them after an election because it realised that the people had spoken.

See this speech in context