Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will split my speech in half. I will deal with the details of the Bill in the second half tomorrow and will deal now with the question of how far we have come in the debate on water charges. I remember very well when we would be met in here every day, and in the media, by Ministers from Fine Gael and the Labour Party who would tell us that everyone would have to pay their water charges and that, "Come what may, you will be paying your water charges."

It is more than three years since Phil Hogan told us that those who did not pay their water charges would have their water turned down to a trickle. It is two years since the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, said that after the concessions were made at the end of 2014 those "reasonable people" would now definitely be joining the payers. All has changed and changed utterly. We have legislation before us that abolishes the water charges as they were and abolishes any arrears people may have faced. The late payment fees and all the attempts to force people to pay are all gone, as we said they could be gone. We now have refunds for those who were bullied into paying. We were the first to raise this and to argue that refunds should be paid. These represent very important victories for the anti-water charges movement.

A big question in this debate, and it was reflected in Deputy Cowen's comments, is how and why this happened. Why did it happen? What lessons are to be drawn about how politics works? For any objective observer who looks at the positions of the different political parties the answer is clear. Water charges, as they were, were defeated by a mass movement of protests. Deputy Cowen shamefully smears this as street thuggery. There were hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, along with community organisations. There was resistance and opposition to the imposition of meters. Centrally there was mass organised non-payment, which ultimately saw 73% of people refusing to pay. One of the consequences of such a movement, and one of the indications of the pressure that was built by that movement, was the shift in positions - as has been pointed out by Fianna Fáil - to the point that at the last general election a significant majority of Deputies were elected to the House on a platform of the abolition of Irish Water and the abolition of water charges, despite the fact Fianna Fáil originally signed this country up for water charges.

What could have been a total and unambiguous victory, with the complete abolition of water charges and the referendum to enshrine public ownership of Irish Water into the Constitution, was turned into something less than that. It was turned into something less than that by Fianna Fáil. It was not turned into it by Fine Gael because Fine Gael are still for water charges and never pretended otherwise. It was turned into something less by Fianna Fáil in three stages. The first stage was in the post-election negotiations with Fine Gael where it gave up on its election commitment, contained in the Fianna Fáil election manifesto, of which I still have a copy, that called for the abolition of Irish Water and water charges. It gave up on the commitment to abolish Irish Water then.

The second stage was in the dying stages of the committee on which we had a working majority in regard to the decision to get rid of water charges and to have no consumption charges for water. This was on 5 April. The next day, or the following week, we had legal advice that contradicted the legal advice of Fianna Fáil and that was all it needed to go and do a very dodgy, backroom deal with Fine Gael to fit back in some form of charge for the usage of water. It was called excess usage but it was a consumption charge for water.

The third stage may be ahead of us but I worry very much about it. I listened to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, in the Chamber yesterday. He said that the referendum on public ownership of Irish Water is no longer a priority for the Government like it once was. Is Fianna Fáil going to acquiesce in that also, despite jumping up and down previously? The lesson is really clear and one that most people knew beforehand, namely, never, ever trust Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil will always make election promises and it will break those election promises. Fianna Fáil will suggest making a deal with some side of a committee and it will break that in order to make a deal that sells out the aspirations of many of those who voted for Fianna Fáil.

The other lesson is that regardless of the machinations of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, we can beat them anyway. They have been beaten before and they will be beaten again. The lesson for people is the people power of organisation.

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