Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The Bill we put before the Dáil tonight would scrap water charges for good and would prevent this Government and, indeed, any future government from charging workers and families for household water. Recent reports in the newspapers that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were conniving in the background to reimpose water charges by the back door have sounded alarm bells for many people. These alarm bells cannot be ignored. This has not come from nowhere, as the Minister knows, and significant work was done by his predecessors in the last Government, along with the Department and Uisce Éireann.

It seems that the preparation work continues to be done to dust off the Government's plan from 2017 for a so-called excessive use charge. Of course, people know and understand that this is nothing more than a Trojan Horse for what would eventually be widespread domestic water charges for people connected to the public water system. The Minister also knows from his own constituency and elsewhere that people are struggling with soaring costs of living and are being hammered with rip-off bills right across the board. Households are under huge pressure just to afford the basics and it would be totally unacceptable that any section of our society would be hit with more unfair bills. I am absolutely confident that working people will see through any effort to charge them for water. I am confident that they will, if needs be, protest and campaign against water charges with everything they have got.

When reports of the Government planning to reintroduce water charges appeared in the media, the Minister was very quick onto the airwaves to dismiss this suggestion. The problem is that many people simply do not believe him. They do not trust Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on this issue because of hard-learned experience, and I have to say that I agree with them. The Government parties' track record speaks for itself. For over a decade if not for more, the Minister's party along with Fine Gael have worked together hand in glove through repeated attempts to force domestic water charges on people across the State.

Of course, thankfully, the people fought back in record numbers. In their hundreds of thousands, people across the South of Ireland protested against water charges. We marched, we protested and we campaigned through a long hard campaigning slog and ultimately we defeated the charge.

The Right2Water movement, which opposed not just domestic metered water charges but the privatisation of Irish Water and the introduction of water poverty, was a stand-out success for people and people power. People from all walks of life and from all political backgrounds and none, urban and rural, came together and simply said "No". They came together to stop Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in their tracks and in 2016 the issue was definitively decided, and they forced a monumental climbdown by Government.

However, despite that success, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, during the confidence and supply arrangement, put together an agreement that sought to introduce water charges through the back door. I was a member of the committee-----

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