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

Why then does the Minister include these interesting distinctions? He can try to explain them but, to my mind, it indicates that he is trying to leave that back door open through this sort of mechanism. Then he will be able to vary what he considers excessive usage and levy charges, as soon as he thinks it is politically expedient or possible to do so. I take some comfort in the fact that it will not be politically possible for him to do it any time soon because he would suffer an absolutely extraordinary political backlash. It is the people's resistance which has forced the Minister to back-pedal as far as he has. This kind of measure is about leaving the back door open and trying to establish the principle of a threshold, above which people will pay. The Minister will then begin to move that threshold based on the monitoring of individuals' usage and new definitions of what excessive usage is, which he can introduce over time. That has been always the Minister's agenda. It was never ever about water conservation for him or for Fine Gael. It was always about getting a bridgehead in respect of charging individuals which would allow bills to be sent and a revenue stream to be generated from water services which, at some time, will allow for the privatisation of water services.

That, of course, is also why the Government does not want to hold a referendum. It does not state it directly, but it cites the legal difficulties and constitutional complexities of defining public ownership. However, all of that is mar dhea because it actually wants to leave the door open for the reintroduction of water charges at some point.

A point we do not emphasise enough in this debate is that there have been three successive attempts by the political establishment to introduce waters charges. It is not new. An attempt was made in the 1980s and another in the 1990s. There is also an attempt now. Therefore, it was not the troika that was responsible. The Government was not pushed into doing this. The decision predates environmental concerns. It was the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil agenda from the word go, but they were not able to implement it because of popular anger and resistance. The logic of the amendment is to delete the problematic provisions in the Bill which are, at best, ambiguous and essentially leave the door open for the monitoring of usage by individuals, paving the way for the reintroduction of charges for usage below what the Government has defined as excessive.

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