Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The cap will not remain in place forever. I was contacted today by a woman who cannot access free legal aid to enable her to take a case involving domestic violence to court because there is a ten-month waiting list. She is trying to obtain maintenance payments and it costs her €400 to pay her solicitor's costs every time she goes before the court. She is now broke because she has been before the court four times. The woman in question accepts that water is a valuable resource and knows it costs money to produce but she cannot afford to pay water charges.

The belief underpinning this measure is that everyone can pay the same amount. This is bad social policy and fundamentally wrong and I oppose the section for that reason. The Oireachtas, rather than Irish Water or its engineers, must decide what is good social policy. We have been elected to provide a sense of fairness in the legislation, decisions and measures we introduce. While I fundamentally agree that everyone should pay something for water, it is unfair to charge everyone the same rate. When people are charged the same regardless of income, parties such as Sinn Féin will grow exponentially.