Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

They might have been subsidised prices here but they would have been charging us for the water. That is what people recognised.

Setting aside all the disingenuous propaganda from the Government about the environmental reasons for bringing in water charges, people knew, and they were right, that the real agenda was to put a price tag on this in order that, at some point, someone could profit out of it. That was the agenda. The Government tried to cover over this fact with constant talk of the need to, and its concern to, invest in the decrepit water infrastructure and to ensure water conservation. It tried to create an equation that as there is 47% of water leaking out of the pipes, which is true, therefore what we need to do is put meters on people's households to reduce their water usage. It was claimed that the reason we have 47% of the water leaking out of our water system is because of excessive usage - people drinking too much water, having too many baths, flushing the toilet too often or, my favourite one, swimming pools, because there were apparently tens of thousands of people with swimming pools. It was all nonsense.

Belatedly, after all the expenditure on water meters, all the political confrontation, debate and so on, the expert group finally confirmed something we had been saying right from the beginning, which was that ordinary householders were not excessive users of water and that, in fact, we used less water per household and per person than people did in the UK, where they have water charges and privatisation, and that we are low users of household water compared with most of our European counterparts. All the justification was nonsense. The real reason we had decrepit water infrastructure was decades of underinvestment by Fianna Fáil-led and Fine Gael-led Governments, because they are the only Governments we have had in this State. It was Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael chronically underinvesting in the water infrastructure and failing to address the massive leaks in the mains, not excessive use in individual households or even leaks. Even Irish Water finally confirmed belatedly that only 7% of the leakage out of the system was to do with households. The vast majority of the leakage was in the mains and the reason this was not addressed was because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, quite often propped up by the Labour Party, had failed to invest sufficiently in the water infrastructure.

That situation worsened after the economic collapse in 2008 when one of the first things to be hit was spending on infrastructure, including water infrastructure. The big drop in investment came post 2008 courtesy of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and was then followed on by Fine Gael and the Labour Party, when average investment in water infrastructure dropped by about €100 million. It is thanks to those guys. It is not thanks to excessive users or these mythical people with swimming pools, but thanks to the Government decision to axe investment in that area. The people did not believe them because it was not true.

It was not pragmatic politics that finally resolved this. It is almost three years to the day since the political establishment of this country were shocked on 11 October 2014 by a demonstration of 100,000 people taking to the streets, a demonstration, by the way, not characterised by political thuggery, but by grandparents, children, mothers with prams and every sector of society mobilising the length and breadth of the country to come to Dublin in an unprecedented demonstration and saying, "Water is a human right and we reject your agenda to turn it into a commodity out of which someone can make profit." That shocked the political establishment and forced the beginning of a retreat which has finally culminated in the Bill before us today, which is going to repeal the water charges and pay back these people who were bullied by the establishment into paying the charges that were forced out of them.

While I often criticise this place as being at bit of a talking shop that does not achieve much, the first meeting of the Right2Water campaign happened in LH2000. I organised the meeting and it was attended by Sinn Féin, the Socialist Party, Deputy Seamus Healy, the Independents 4 Change, the Mandate trade union, the Unite trade union and the Communications Workers Union. We came up with the name Right2Water and said that water is a human right and that we were going to resist this, and we named the date for the 11 October demonstration. We did not know at that time how big it was going to be or how historic that movement was going to be. The battle was won by the people on the streets in mass peaceful demonstrations, forcing retreat after retreat on the political establishment.

Then we come to this Bill. Finally, the establishment is forced to capitulate but is trying to leave the door open, still using the same disingenuous arguments about water conservation and excessive use. What I find incredible is that, in all the time the Government has talked about water conservation, it never put in place an actual water conservation grant to encourage or assist people to conserve water. It is still not here in this Bill. It gave €100, which was a bribe and which was not attached in any way at all to having to undertake any water conservation measures, and even now in this Bill there is no water conservation. We bothered to put in our pre-budget submissions for the past three years extra money to help householders who have leaks but cannot afford to fix them to fix them, and we put in other water conservation measures. It is proof positive that the Government never cared about water conservation and that it was never the issue for it. It was always about getting the charging regime going, getting a revenue stream going, getting all the private consultants in, getting our friend, Denis O'Brien, to have the contracts to put in the water meters, and all these people at the big honey pot and the big cash cow. They could make a fortune out of it and the people would pay. Even still, the Government will not put in a water conservation grant. It wants to leave the door open to the future reintroduction of water charges with this excessive charge and by having some billing structure which it can expand later, in a few years, after 2019, when it thinks the political environment might have changed for the better.

All the way along, dishonesty and disingenuousness has characterised the Government's approach but the people found it out and they defeated it. We will resist the attempt in this Bill to leave the door open. Indeed, if the Government makes the mistake of trying to reintroduce water charges in the future, it will feel the wrath of people power and the people's movement that defeated it over the past four years. If the Government cares about water conservation, I look forward to its support for our amendments to this Bill.

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