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

-----that the reason we have got here is because of people power and the resistance of ordinary people to the attempts of the political establishment in this country, including the Labour Party, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil who wanted to sell off our natural resources and then have them sold back to us at a cost, whether it was water or trees.

In case the Government is under any illusions as a result of the back door it has left in this legislation to try to reintroduce the charges at a future point, the resistance will be very quick to remobilise if the Government attempts to reintroduce the charges. The attitude the Government has taken to the amendments we tabled is telling. The central justification the Government had for the charges all along was its concern to deal with the decrepit water infrastructure in the country and to promote water conservation measures, but actually there is nothing substantial or serious in that regard in the Bill. The Government has refused to accept amendments that have tried to bring serious conservation measures into the Bill, such as the water conservation grant and regulations around building that would ensure water harvesting equipment is standard in all new-build houses. That is something the Government has resisted. If it was serious about water conservation, those are the sorts of measures it would introduce and it would own up to the fact that the reason the water infrastructure is in a mess is because the Government slashed the capital investment programme to water infrastructure during the austerity years. Even now with the Irish Water business plan the Minister referred to, it is still way short of what is necessary to address the huge infrastructural deficit in water services. We need to double the level of investment in water infrastructure rehabilitation if we are going to address the massive leakage out of the system, but there is no sign of that from this Government. We have won a battle but the war is not over because the Government has left a back door open. Any credit on this issue goes to the people on the streets who fought this battle over recent years.

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