David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am afraid that has not allayed peoples' concerns as the Minister of State would have, noisily, heard last Wednesday when ten of thousands of people gathered outside Leinster House to voice their frustration in respect of water charges. He referred to the water conservation grant which this recommendation is about. This is not a conservation grant at all - let us be honest about it. Let us accept what this is - it was a partial climbdown by the Government in regard to the charge. On the one hand the Minister of State said the cost at €160 for an individual and €260 for a family will be reduced to €60 and €160 through the so-called water conservation grant. However, water conservation has gone out the window. While I disagree with SIPTU and Jack O'Connor's position on water charges, he was right when he said we have a bizarre situation where we are paying for the water we use but nobody is paying a penalty for the water that is lost in the system. That is what we have ended up with, a cap system. To call it a water conservation grant is nonsense. How does providing a grant of €100 conserve water? Will the Minister of State explain how that grant will save one single solitary drop of water? It does nothing of the sort.

This follows the complete mess made by the Government on water charges. It is trying to clean up the mess and do its best to allay people's fears but that has not happened. We have ended up with the convoluted system of a change on the one hand and a water conservation grant on the other and a relationship between the Department of Social Protection and Irish Water. It is all a complete mess of the Government's making. Our recommendation seeks to remove that element of it from the Bill because we are opposed to the charges. This makes a mockery of the notion that water charges were about conservation because it has been proven, given that the Government has capped the charge up to 2019, that it is about establishing the principle of the charge, getting the revenue in and getting people accustomed to paying for it.

The final point I wish to raise with the Minister of State is the issue of the bin charge waiver scheme in Waterford, which I raised earlier. I am sure it is not the only area that has had such a scheme in place. It was abolished at the last council meeting by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael but not by Sinn Féin who voted against it. I want to set the record straight on that. People were given the same logic when charges for waste collection were first introduced, namely, that there would be a nominal fee that would be quite small but then the charges went up and up every year. We were told it was not about privatisation, rather it was about improving the service and that the State could not be a regulator and a provider of the service. All those excuses and arguments were made. The charge increased to a certain amount and all the local authorities withdrew from providing that service, the private operators came in and now I do not believe a single local authority in the State provides the service. It was privatised and the bin waiver scheme, which was in place to protect the vulnerable, has been abolished and now there is no protection for them. It was interesting that the chief executive office of Waterford City and County Council, Mr. Michael Walsh, when supporting the abolition of the waiver, asked why does the Department of Social Protection not have a bin waiver scheme for everybody, that it is its job and should not be the job of a local authority. The Minister of State might want to respond to Mr. Walsh on that. I saw that comment as a cop-out by the council. We can see the same is happening with the water conservation grant. That is a temporary measure - that is all it is. It is a con job on the people. I will be pressing this recommendation because I believe this is a complete mess for the Government and entirely of its own making. For that reason, I do not accept the Minister of State's response.