Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Taoiseach knows, the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services is meeting to discuss what was supposed to be its final draft report on the future of water services. The recommendations of that report represented a very significant victory for all those who have opposed domestic water charges and the privatisation agenda at the heart of the Government's water policy. On the basis of that version of the report, domestic water charges would be abolished, the metering programme would be scrapped, and the people would have their say, by way of a referendum, on a constitutional guarantee for the public ownership of water services.

The overriding message from the final draft report is that our water supply is not some commodity to be eventually auctioned off by the current Government or any other.

However, it now emerges that Fine Gael and the relevant Minister, Deputy Coveney, will not under any circumstances accept the democratic will of the people or the Oireachtas. The Taoiseach wants to preserve the possibility of water charges through the back door. The Taoiseach wants to maintain the possibility of privatisation at some future date. The bully boys of the Government wish now to sabotage the work of the committee. Like all bullies, they cannot accept when they have lost. Indeed, they are now trying to bully their friends in Fianna Fáil into a U-turn. Indeed, it seems they are trying to bully the people into accepting the Government's water policy.

When will the Taoiseach get it into his head that this is never going to happen? The argument on water has been won on the streets by thousands of protesters who marched at countless demonstrations to defend their rights. It has been won by the majority of Deputies who ran for election to this Dáil on an anti-water-charges platform. It was won for a third time at the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services.

The Taoiseach cannot ignore that reality. The people have spoken loud and clear. They turned up in their thousands again on Saturday to reinforce their demands. The Taoiseach has lost. The matter has been settled on the streets by protest, in politics at the general election and in the Oireachtas at the water committee. The draft report, as it stood this morning, met the demands and the democratically-expressed views of the people. That cannot be casually swept under the carpet to suit the Taoiseach's political agenda. The Taoiseach's behaviour - and that of the Government - in particular, his refusal to accept defeat on the issue of water, represents a real crisis in terms of democratic representation. It is time for the Taoiseach to finally listen up: it is over. The Taoiseach has lost and the people have won. It is time for the Taoiseach to be gracious in defeat. Will the Taoiseach now stop undermining the democratic process in the Oireachtas and accept the demands of the people?

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