Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I wish to criticise very strongly the reaction of the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, to Deputy Joan Collins's point on Leaders' Questions this morning. His response was quite shocking. He said the question of a referendum on water does not matter, does not affect the Irish people, does not have any impact on our lives, is neither here nor there, is an academic question, and does not bother any of us. He implied the other referenda that he wants, on blasphemy, etc., do bother us and have an impact on our lives. His remark was disgraceful because, from 2014 to 2017, the biggest response of a people's movement in the history of the State was seen in respect of something Governments tried to impose on those people. That response included many communities being treated and manhandled very badly not in scenes reminiscent of those in Catalonia, including Barcelona, but in very serious scenes of abuse and violence by gardaí in working class estates on the north side where people were blocking meters. Some of this activity resulted in people going to prison. Some resulted in many residents having to sacrifice much of their ordinary lives to get up early in the morning and mobilise on the streets in the freezing cold and in all sorts of weather. It affected people in areas such as Clondalkin, Drimnagh, Donnycarney, Coolock, Finglas, Dún Laoghaire and in places with which I am not so familiar, such as Togher and Ballyphehane in Cork. They mobilised and organised to protest. Furthermore, they mobilised and organised on an estate and road-by-road basis to ensure every member of the community would be aware of the issues concerning water changes and understood why it was necessary to mount a campaign of resistance that included non-payment. A major objective of the opposition was to prevent the privatisation of our most precious resource.

In early 2014, I organised a conference with my union, Unite, to examine the question of the commodification of water. We had a woman over from Bolivia called Marcela Olivera whose brother had led a campaign in that country to stop the privatisation of its water by Bechtel, Suez and other major multinationals who had moved in to gobble up a precious commodity of a people who were already impoverished and excluded. Thankfully, the campaign in Bolivia resulted in the prevention of the privatisation of water.

However, it also resulted very tragically in major riots and the deaths three of its citizens. When Marcela Olivera came to Dublin, she explained this very carefully. We also had people from Paris, Hamburg and Munich, all of whom were ordinary citizens campaigning for the re-municipalisation of their precious commodity, water.

In different parts of the world, including Europe, there is resistance to the privatisation of water. This was a key feature for people who marched, refused to pay and encouraged the development of an awareness in their communities that once a price is put on a commodity and an essential service, it becomes subject to the rigours of the market. It is open for competition, to be bought and sold and used and abused by giant multinational corporations which make extraordinary profits from the fundamentals of life.

Water is a fundamental of life. People can live for many days without food, as Bobby Sands and others have proven in the past. One cannot survive more than three or four days without water. It is the essence of life itself, along with the air we breathe. Perhaps someday there will be an attempt to privatise air. Some would argue that this has already been done because, for example, the poor in Mexico City live in the dirty, smelly and polluted part and the wealthy live in the hills, where the clean air is to be found. An inverted form of privatisation has already taken place, particularly in the Third World because of the polluted conditions in which people are forced to live.

Privatisation of water was absolutely central to the objective of the tens of thousands of people who fought, and marched and organised through the country. I am afraid that, once again, the Taoiseach is way behind the people and has got them wrong. He does not really get the ordinary people in this country. He does not get them on the question of choice and the eighth amendment or on strikes and how people fight to improve their wages and stop the privatisation of buses. He certainly does not get them on the question of water charges. How he responded to Deputy Joan Collins and, therefore, to the population at large, was an extraordinary insult. People should check out his response, which was nothing more than class snobbery. It was disdainful towards the people of the country who, like the their counterparts in Bolivia, successfully prevented the privatisation of water. The argument that water will always and for ever be saved from privatisation is as spurious as the Bill before us. The Bill is as full of complications, loopholes, obfuscations and different interpretations as a complex set of molecules one would look at under a microscope if one was trying to figure out chemistry.

It is obvious that this is an attempt to keep water charges open for the future, not just by the back door but by the front door, the windows, the skylight or whatever means necessary. The question of the sell-off and commodification of our water is being left open by the Government. That is why we need a better response from the Taoiseach to the need for a referendum. Our Bill has passed Second Stage and, as Deputy Joan Collins said, the Government would like to leave it there to rot, die and wither away rather than deal with this very fundamental and crucial issue. I would argue that it absolutely does matter to the people and will make a difference to their lives if it were enshrined in our Constitution that our water could never be privatised.

I want to respond to those who are pushing the Bill, that is, the Minister of State, Deputy English, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and their assistants, namely, Deputy Barry Cowen and Fianna Fail. They are giving the Ministers the cover they require after the fact. The country rose up, resisted and won on the question of water charges being abolished. The Minister claimed as a fact that the great work done by Irish Water in recent years is proof of the necessity to create the utility. He counterposed the reduction in boil water notices and the leaks treated to the efforts made before the creation of Irish Water. This is a hilarious and ridiculous comparison. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have, over decades, consistently and deliberately underfunded local authorities and overseen the systematic neglect of basic water services.

When he was Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen crowed about all of the extra fiscal space we had and the billions we had to spend. During his tenure as Taoiseach and Minister for Finance, he never did anything to fix a leak, ensure clean water or stop sewage flowing into our rivers. Underfunding of water services was dramatic on his watch, on that of Fine Gael and on that of successive coalition Governments involving Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Labour Party.

There is no comparison with Irish Water, at which millions of euro were thrown in order that people could pay themselves bonuses, engage consultants and give contracts for metering to Denis O'Brien and Siteserv. I do not have all of the figures in front of me, but everybody has become familiar with them. There was a deliberate running down of local authority funding and water utility services over previous decades. The arguments put forward do not, if people will pardon the pun, hold water.

The fiction recited by Deputy Barry Cowen may be worth a literary Nobel Prize some day. There was desperate attempt by Fianna Fáil to rewrite history and call the defeat of water charges to its credit. I do not recall Fianna Fáil out blocking meters, advocating non-payment and mobilising hundreds of thousands of people, nationally and locally, time and again to ensure that this, first, became the major issue of the general election campaign and, second, forced a deal between the two major conservative parties. In this fiction, Fianna Fáil has looked into its heart and decided that, for some reason, people do not pay water charges. Given that the very idea of water charges originated from the soldiers of destiny, how could Deputy Barry Cowen believe he was free to engage in this fiction? The reality that cannot be changed is that those who marched, protested, blocked meter installation, resisted and organised day and night know it is different, regardless of the fictional ramblings of Deputy Barry Cowen.

Much of what I want to say has been highlighted by others, but I will make a general point. Many here and in the media try to justify water charges by invoking environmental concerns, dismissing the charge itself and disparaging those who are active and who took on the forces of the State. We were told that it is just a small charge, that water has to be paid for and that the usual suspects do not want to pay for anything. We were given a litany of reasons to justify this, that and the other. I still hear bitter commentators make bewildered statements about why water charges caused such a huge movement to challenge the powers that be after so many years.

I hear the anger expressed by Deputy Barry Cowen and I understand it. Those to whom I refer thought that the Irish people would, after eight years, accept any amount of austerity and they were shocked and outraged when, finally, the population stood up to them. This rising was not based on ignorance or misunderstanding. Rather, it was based on knowing exactly what the game was, namely, that the charges were about commodifying an essential public good for which we already pay and that commodification was the prelude, as is anything else, to privatisation, increased charges and allowing Denis O'Brien and other industry bosses to make huge profits.

We know what happened across the world when charges followed privatisation. There was a lack of investment and services were often polluted. I remember in Britain the whole of Yorkshire was without water for months after Maggie Thatcher privatised the system because private utility companies could not deliver clean water services. There were outbreaks of cholera in South Africa when it privatised its water. In Brazil and elsewhere people have suffered Veolia's treatment of water services and at the hands of multinationals to which profit, and not the environment, is god.

It has been clear from the expert report that a major red herring was created around the question of average use in Ireland. I do not want to go into the complexities of the issue because people with better minds have done so, including those on my side of the fence. I refer here to comments made previously by Deputies Paul Murphy, Ó Broin and Boyd Barrett. There is a significant attempt to confuse the Irish population and, as I said, to leave not just the front door open but also the backdoor, the windows et alto bring in water charges in the future.

The crucial issue is that while all this was happening and while there is an attempt to implement some kind of charge for overuse, there is no evidence that the average Irish man, woman or child is guilty of overuse of water or of wasting water. Irish Water has given the Government figures that show that average usage here is below average usage in Great Britain, Denmark, etc., where they have meters and charges. What we are trying to do here is bring in a system whereby the average use will be reduced over a period of five years. By that time, there will be another Government and more and more people will be charged. There is confusion about whether a household of four, five or six is then calculated on the basis of having more allowances. A person could live on their own and use the same amount of water or live with two people and use the same amount of water but, generally speaking, they would need to use more if there are two, three or four people in the house. That is not rocket science. It is obvious. In a society where the average occupancy in households is increasing because the crisis has led so many young people and other extended family members to remain at home until they are in their 30s, there is an increasing number of households that are made up of four adults. According to the statistics, the average household is 2.75 but if there are four adults in the house and they use slightly more than the average, are they water wasters? Are they guilty of wasting this precious commodity? Are they more guilty than Irish Water for not fixing the leaks? Are they more guilty than the Government and previous Governments for not investing in the infrastructure and attempting to address the real problem where over 40% of our water - clean treated water - leaks through the system? An individual usage figure was something Fianna Fáil argued for, but we still have an overall household figure. We did the sums. If the average is 133 litres per person per day, the average household allowance will be 622. For four adults using the average amount, it will be 540 between them. It only requires them to use not even 20% extra water per person to face charges.

By hook or by crook, the Government, with the help of junior Minister Deputy Cowen and his Soldiers of Destiny party, is determined to bring in water charges. If it cannot do it in its lifetime, however long its confidence and supply agreement lasts, it is leaving it open for whichever party is in Government and possibly both parties together in coalition, because if they were honest with the people, that is exactly what they would do after the next election because there is not the thickness of a cigarette paper of difference between them in terms of policy. All of this is a charade, cosmetic and fictitious. To claim that Fianna Fáil has saved the Irish people on the question of water charges is a great joke and I am sure it will do the rounds in the water movement and the communities about how funny Deputy Cowen is. He is actually a scream when it comes to describing the history of this movement.

I will finish by saying that the Bill will probably get through because the Government has the backing of Fianna Fáil. The two big conservatives blocs here back it. In the past, it had the backing of the Green Party or the Labour Party at times to pursue water charges and to pursue people for them. However, there is a growing radical movement in this country that can see through it and the neoliberal agenda of the class it represents, which is to take every commodity - everything that moves - including health, transport and all of the decent public services. It did it with the bins. Look at the disaster waste management has become in this country. I know the knee-jerk reaction will be, "but Bríd Smith, you told people not to pay for it". Our movement argued that once we commodify an essential service and begin to pay for it, it becomes the subject of the market, as per the rules of the EU. No Government, local authority or State body can maintain control over a service that is paid for without allowing the private operators in on the act, and that is the very reason we said all of our essential services should be paid for through direct taxation.

Where are we going to find more taxes? One word: Apple. It is all over the media tonight. The Minister for Finance has been told to take the money off Apple or we will be brought to court and sued. The figure is €13 billion and possible even €19 billion if we add in the interest. What is wrong with the heads of the people who run this country? Imagine what could be done with that money and yet we are saying to a greedy corporation like Apple that it is great, it brings loads of jobs here and it has not made enough profit so we will not touch those billions that it owes us in taxes. It is not the only one because as we will see during next week's discussion on the budget, there are at least 13 other giant corporations in this country who are paying less than 1% effective tax. There is an average so-called effective tax rate of about 9% but there are 13 declared corporations of enormous proportions with enormous profits who are paying less than 1%, yet the Government wants to tell ordinary working families, the disabled and pensioners to pay more when it knows that they have already paid for their services through their taxation. Extra money was taken from the car tax to cover water service charges in the past. When Fianna Fáil had to do a U-turn on this, it said extra money would be taken from PRSI to cover water services. All of the conservative parties in this House need at some point to own up and just declare that, really, they are not for the little people. It is only the big guys they care about because that is what we see as the little people. As the ordinary people, we see all their efforts going to support, help, bail out and bring leniency for the big guys and the rest of us can go to hell, go to jail or go out marching. At the end of the day, these two parties will do deals with each other. The Government has a junior Minister on this side of the House who will back it up very nicely. Shame on Fianna Fáil. It really ought to be called out on this one. Obviously, shame on the Minister of State, Deputy English, and his Government but the people on this side of the House who are trying to hide, go for cover and pretend they are the heroes of the Irish people really need to be called out. I will leave at that. I hope we get another change to debate this further next week.

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