Water charges fiasco ‘classic example of how not to do policy’
THE ill-fated introduction of water charges was doomed from the start, according to a new report by researchers at NUI Galway. The university’s Whitaker Institute hosted a conference yesterday in which delegates heard how the Irish Water debacle was a classic example of ‘How Not to Do Public Policy” – the title of the session. The report’s author, economist Jim O’Leary, said: “A sense of trying to achieve too much too soon is suggested by the approach to the overall water sector reform programme. “In examining policy on water, our reading of the evidence is that it was driven by a vision that would have been more appropriate for a seven to 10-year timeframe than a three to five-year period.” While he commended the Commission of Taxation for its proposals that led to the successful blueprint for establishing the Local Property Tax, he said the government “ignored its (the commission’s) proposals on water charges” and “were in several essential respects the antithesis of what government chose to do”. The report found that “the universal free allowance and metering were made before their implications were properly understood and without the alternatives being rigorously assessed”. “At the end of the day, the government decisively lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the people,” Mr O’Leary said in reference to massive anti-water charge demonstrations around the country before the introduction of water charges was finally scrapped. Alan Ahearne, director of the Whitaker Institute, said: “What we have learned is that good policymaking requires all options and all aspects of the options to be investigated and that policymakers should be careful not to let perfect be the enemy of good.”