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

In so far as the Minister claims that this Bill is geared towards water conservation, it is not directed at the majority of people but at a very small group which is identified as excessive users. We do not accept that is the main motive and we have expressed the view that it is a means of keeping a foot in on domestic charging so that over time the thresholds will be lowered bringing more people into the charging net. If the Minister was serious and this was actually a water conservation Bill and the matter is as urgent as he says it is - which it is - he would do something about this now. Rather than wait for some stage in the future when resources allow, he would support people, through grants, who are trying to reduce treated water usage. These can be for things such as flushing toilets which can be very substantially reduced with a little investment but is something that many people cannot afford. People want to do the right thing by the environment and conserve our water resources. They never accepted that the Government's water charges were designed to do that, seeing them as designed to punish them on top of all the other financial punishments they suffered. We are proposing a positive incentive to people, so that where people install water-harvesting measures or measures that will reduce their treated water usage, the State will support them by providing them with a grant. If it is important it should happen now, not at some distant point in the future.

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