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

As we move towards the close of the debate on this Bill, it is important to recall how we got here and what this was all about. In this debate, and over the course of the past three years, all sides have tried to put their spin on what it was all about, and that spinning continues with people trying to put forward a particular interpretation of the facts. The most ironic, almost laughable, spin that has been put on it are attempts by the Government and Fianna Fáil to say that what is being achieved with this Bill today is somehow to their credit. That is laughable because, although this Bill very deliberately leaves a back door open to the reintroduction of water charges, at another level it is a victory not for any political party and most certainly not for Fine Gael or Fine Fail but for the mass movement of people power against the water charges, a mass movement of peaceful civil disobedience in refusing to pay an unjust charge and then mass mobilisation on the streets on an unprecedented level which forced a historic climbdown by Fine Gael and Fine Fáil.

The people certainly know this but it is important to remember this as this Bill moves through its Final Stage that both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have been committed for a long time to trying to introduce water charges. Fianna Fáil, when it was in government, wanted to introduce a water charge of €400 a year and it had a PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, report detailing how it was going to introduce water charges. Fine Gael then came in after it and that was the third attempt during the past 20 to 25 years by the political establishment to bring in water charges. Austerity and the troika programme was the excuse and the proof that it was just an excuse was that they had tried to bring water charges in during the 1990s but they were defeated by a mass movement of boycott, civil disobedience and peaceful resistance on the streets. Also, back in the 1980s attempts to bring in water charges were similarly defeated by a mass movement of peaceful resistance, ironically at the time it included leading figures such as the former Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, who then subsequently went over to the other side and tried to justify the introduction of water charges when his party was in government with Fine Gael. However, the people who remained consistent on this were the ordinary working people who fought it in the 1980s, fought it again in the 1990s and fought it again this time around and triumphed against the combined efforts of the two major political parties, with considerable support from those in the media and so on which seemed to think there was something barbarian or philistine about the opposition to water charges, when in fact that opposition was absolutely justified opposition to a regressive tax imposed on the less well off in our society and which was linked to a very well worked out and concerted agenda to privatise water resources, regardless of whatever the Government tries to claim now.

It is not just a theoretical supposition that the introduction of water charges and the establishment of Irish Water were a stepping stone to privatisation. Privatisation commenced immediately when Irish Water was set up. Look at the people who were involved. Denis O'Brien, now implicated in the Paradise - or parasite - Papers of tax evasion, got the contract to put in the water meters, which was worth nearly €1 billion, in shady circumstances. I call that privatisation and very shady privatisation. All the usual suspects of consultancy firms and accountancy firms, many of which are now also implicated in the parasite papers for assisting, and continuing to assist, the wealthy in Irish society to stow their money away in offshore tax havens, were also involved in Irish Water. They got massive consultancy contracts to set up Irish Water. Irish Water was a honey pot for wealthy, greedy private interests. Much of its management operations, design and so on, when it was set up and now, were contracted out to private firms. As soon as Irish Water was set up, it was being hollowed out. While notionally it was in public ownership, in reality it was in the hands of private interests, whether private consultant, private contractors or big tycoons like Denis O'Brien and other big firms.

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