Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies McDonald and Ó Broin for bringing this Bill, which the Labour Party will be supporting, to the House. We opposed the Water Services Act 2017 when it was introduced. To quote my former party colleague, Jan O’Sullivan, it was "a complete fudge between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael". It is incredible to me that we are still talking about water charges in 2025. They were put on the table in 2010 by Fianna Fáil in its agreement with the troika after it bulldozed the economy. The issue was then taken up by Fine Gael and the buck was passed to my own party. I will not try to absolve us of our role in that matter. Obviously, we have been on a journey with water charges. We have paid a price for it politically and on a personal level for some of our public representatives. We took a position, we made an argument and we lost that argument - we accept that. As far as we are concerned, it is a settled issue.

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