Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey. I despair when this item comes up for discussion. We, in this House, tried to improve the whole water business but neither the previous two Ministers nor the current two would accept any of the amendments which would have improved the legislation.

The charge of €260 per household is a poll tax, straight from the Mrs. Thatcher school of taxation. This was always financed through direct taxation. As pointed out, at €100,000, one would pay 14 times more tax for a family of four than at €15,000. A sixfold increase in income leads to 14 times more tax.

That is progressive taxation. It is way better than the poll tax the House was asked to agree. We used to pay for it through our taxation in a progressive way. That refutes the first fallacy in the Government's approach.

The second fallacy is the idea that we were all wasting water. We found out as this debate went on that 94% of it was wasted by the engineers and 6% of it was wasted by households. What did we do? We hired all the engineers and more to work by transferring them from the local authorities to Irish Water. Despite the evidence of the McLoughlin report, which found that local government in Ireland is seriously over-managed by a factor of between one quarter and one third, a cynical decision was made to shunt all of these staff over to Irish Water. The well-known economist, Dr. John FitzGerald, who is not the most radical man in Irish economics, says that the company has started out with 4,300 people doing the work of 2,400 people. That is why people are so resentful of what has happened.

This way of financing water off the balance sheet is so mysterious that EUROSTAT has not yet agreed to it. The banking committee is investing off-balance sheet transactions. If someone offers to sell one a used car off the balance sheet, one should not enter into the deal. I do not know who persuaded the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government that doing things off the balance sheet has particular merits. It does not have such merits.

The meters were financed from the pension fund. We will not use the meters because there is to be a flat charge of €260. Some €550 million has been taken from people's pensions for no purpose, unless the Government intends after the next general election to switch on the meters and start charging people. The meters perform no function. As Senator Mooney has said, putting a stop to metering is the least that should be done. There is no point to the metering element of this measure now that the Government has chosen to levy a charge of €260 per household.

I suggest that the €100 conservation grant will be the least deserving payment to come from the Tánaiste's budget in the Department of Social Protection. It has nothing to do with conservation. One will be able to spend the €100 on bottled water. There will be no restriction on it. One will not have to do anything that is related to conservation. It will be paid to people regardless of income. We will compound the imposition of a charge of €260 per household by indiscriminately giving €100 to anybody who signs up for it.

We were told that the new board would change everything. It was disappointing to see in today's newspapers that eight of the oldies are to be retained. There will be just four new people on the board. We voted on this section of the Bill the last day. We expected a new broom. This must be one of the most unpopular companies in the history of this country. It is remarkable that eight members of the board have been retained in one capacity or another.

We were told that the establishment of a single big organisation would lead to economies of scale. The numbers in the McLoughlin report indicate no such thing. Some small water authorities, like that in County Leitrim, had a relatively low rate of wastage. Some large authorities had a relatively high rate of wastage. If we had not chosen to establish a big monopoly like Irish Water, we would be able to compare the efficiency of the good water authorities with the inefficiency of the bad water authorities. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government must be unique in proposing a monopoly as a solution for any way to produce any commodity.

I regret that this Government is somehow in thrall to the water industry, just as the last Government impaled itself on the banking industry. Not many boards are reappointed after drawing 250,000 people onto the streets of this country. I suspect that the cost of this to the Government will be borne at the ballot box. This is a hugely unpopular measure. It came at the end of year after year of austerity. I saw the anti-water charges march in Maynooth. It seemed to me that the vast bulk of the people were on their uppers. They do not have the €260 that will be required to pay for this upfront.

When the water charge is combined with the universal social charge - once one goes over €12,000, this charge is imposed on every penny of income - it is clear that a measure of regressiveness and unfairness has been added to the charging system for public services in Ireland. This was not the case when those services were paid for through income tax, which is much more progressive.

The whole episode has been an exercise in how not to establish a quango. It is a blot on politics and public administration in this country that this company keeps on going, regardless of how much criticism it receives from this House, the other House or hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. It seems to have a captive hold over the Government. The Government is continuing to promote it even though it is one of the most unpopular things we have had for many hundreds of years here.