Political reality is water charges are dead, now for a decent burial
Fianna Fail will vote to finally end water charges, which could lead to a general election next year, writes Jody Corcoran
THE expert commission on domestic public water services will report this week. In advance, a head of steam is building, as though the eventual outcome is not pre-ordained. It is pre-ordained, and has been since the General Election. The water charge regime as we know it is over and will not return. All that remains to be decided is who gets the credit, or blame, and what happens next.
The current brouhaha boils down to one question: what will Fianna Fail do? That is because the make-up of the Dail dictates that the future of water charges will ultimately be decided by Fianna Fail. The answer to the question is that party will vote to end the currently suspended water charge regime. So, the bottom line is that water charges as we know them are dead, for the next 10 to 15 years.
But it is not as simple as that. The question remains: how will we pay to upgrade the water and waste water system? Say hello to property tax, our little friend.
The imponderable is whether the Government will fall on this entire issue. That will depend on whether Enda Kenny is still the leader of Fine Gael in April. If he is, the odds are that the Government will survive. If he is not, the odds are that there will be an election this summer. In other words, Fine Gael is between the devil and the deep blue sea on this one.
Now let us unravel the various complexities. The thing to remember at all times is that the entire water charges controversy is no longer an environmental issue. It is now first and foremost a political issue, and will remain so.
So reports from the Environmental Protection Agency last week, about raw sewage being discharged into rivers and seas, and other reports about the antiquated water supply system, and all the rest of it — forget about those. These issues are critical. That much is accepted by almost all concerned, but they will prove secondary to the decisions about to be taken, because the decisions about to be taken will be entirely political.
The background to this is well known, but let us put that background in an over-arching political context so that we might better understand what is likely to happen next.
The last Government rushed in the establishment of Irish Water at a time of severe austerity, and introduced a charging regime that was initially punitive. The groundup backlash eventually shook the body politic to its core.
That Government sought to quell this dissent by altering and re-altering the charging regime, but failed to do so. If anything, it made matters worse. What really shook the body politic, however, was that the dissent reached across the social divide into the lower middle and middle classes, who had been hammered by austerity. Their dissent also related to the Government’s refusal to rule out the eventual sale of Irish Water.
This refusal spoke to a political establishment still in cahoots with an unregulated capitalist system which had caused the crash and Great Recession in the first place.
The dissent was initially stoked in socially deprived and working class areas and then harnessed and driven by the far left on the political spectrum here. In terms of how to organise and run such a forceful campaign, the AAA/ PBP, and others on the far left, delivered a masterclass. This led to the election to the Dail of the unreconstructed socialist Paul Murphy.
His election alarmed the body politic here — particularly Sinn Fein, which had expected to win the seat in that by-election in Dublin South-West in 2014. After Murphy’s election, the Sinn Fein leadership — until then prepared to pay the charge — performed a dramatic volteface. Sinn Fein fully reversed into the campaign of dissent and ultimately the Right2Water movement was born.
In years to come, political scientists will study this phenomenon: how a ground-up campaign morphed into a political movement that put the fear of God into the political establishment. An inherent part of any such study must surely analyse why the Right2Water movement did not reap greater dividends at the ballot box in the subsequent general election.
Here, both AAA/PBP and Sinn Fein can be faulted. Middle Ireland recoiled at the treatment of the then Labour leader, Joan Burton at Jobstown, for example; and was reminded of the Sinn Fein/ IRA axis by child sex abuse allegations exposed by people like Mairia Cahill.
While Middle Ireland remained angered at the unregulated capitalist system — represented by banks, bondholders and the like — it also remained unprepared to hand over the keys of the country to unreconstructed socialists like Paul Murphy, or to a political party still in the shadow of a gunman in west Belfast.
When the political scientists go to work, they might also like to further study the political phenomenon that remains Fianna Fail.
Here was a political party almost as old as the State itself, in virtually unbroken power since then, which had drifted from its political roots into the cosy embrace of that unregulated capitalist system that had caused the Great Recession, and was now, five years on, on the cusp of a significant political comeback. How could that happen?
Let us leave aside the deeply engrained nature of Fianna Fail in the national psyche. The Fianna Fail comeback can be put down to two things: first, the callous (some would say arrogant) manner in which the massive majority Fine Gael/Labour Coalition had governed, exacerbating
great so- cial inequities the length and breadth of the country.
Fine Gael stood accused of looking after the better off, those who had automatically signed up to paying water charges, for example. And Labour stood accused of abandoning the squeezed middle, just as it had abandoned the people of Jobstown and in other such socially deprived areas many decades before.
As much, if not more than that, was the second reason for the Fianna Fail comeback: the Great Recession and tentative recovery had widened the economic and social divide between urban and rural Ireland to a chasm.
Fianna Fail had arisen out of working-class rural Ireland — the small farmer, stone mason, farrier. Micheal Martin’s singular achievement was to take Fianna Fail back to its roots, to the working class and the lower middle class of rural Ireland, which had remained conservative in nature and traditional in outlook. To this day, irrespective of what all others may claim, Fianna Fail still understands the working class and (lower) middle class in Ireland better than all other political parties. This was the foundation upon which Fianna Fail formed its return.
Now let me explain why the issue of water charges remains so critical — critical to the Fianna Fail rebuilding project; critical to where the far left and Sinn Fein go now; critical to the future ambitions of Fine Gael; and critical to what is to become of Labour.
All of this will relate to the outcome of the next election and the future direction of this country. It is best to do so looking through the prism of Fianna Fail — which, as I have stated, will ultimately decide the future of water charges.
After the election, Fianna Fail point-blank refused to enter a formal Government arrangement with Fine Gael. This decision was presented as the birth of ‘new politics’. The term ‘new politics’ has been much derided — but as we are witnessing elsewhere around the world, new ways of governing post the Great Recession is de rigueur. The jury is still out on new politics here, but is coming in with a frown on its face.
The last budget was the first of this millennium not informed by ‘Fianna Fail: the Celtic Tiger Years’, or by ‘Fine Gael: the Regressive Years’, and as such, I have argued, was the most significant since the turn of the millennium. However, ‘new politics’ is still struggling to find its feet in terms of authoritative, or stable Government, and may not have time to do so before the next election arrives.
An inescapable interpretation is that ‘new politics’ is a staging post in the Fianna Fail rebuilding project. For that to continue, the by now toxic issue of water charges needed to be taken off the floor of Dail Eireann. Otherwise, the far left and Sinn Fein would have used the issue in this Dail to inflict political damage on both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael as the political establishment.
Initially, Fine Gael resisted this, mostly because it had invested, and squandered so much political capital on the issue. However, Fianna Fail used its enhanced position to force the point.
In this regard, it was primarily facilitated by the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, who was most anxious to be re-elected Taoiseach and secure a place in history.
However, the decision caused wounds within the Fine Gael parliamentary and wider political party. Leo Varadkar, for example, was known to be particularly resistant to the suspension of water charges pending the outcome of the deliberations of the expert commission, which will report this week.
As agreed by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael before the formation of this Government, that report will be submitted to and its recommendations considered by an Oireachtas committee, which is scheduled to complete its work by March 31, when the Dail will then vote on the future of water charges once and for all.
There is leeway for that committee to extend its deliberations into April (which it will do), but eventually the political fudge must come to an end — and the Dail will get to vote on the issue, probably by May.
Last week there was brouhaha over the appointment as a chairman to that committee of Padraig O Ceidigh — who was appointed to the Seanad on the say so of Micheal Martin. The AAA/PBP, in particular, was up to high dudgeon over his appointment.
What is going on here is the AAA/PBP seeking to stake out its ownership of the anti-water charges issue. The AAA/PBP may also have been fooled by reports that Fianna Fail will ultimately vote to retain the water charges regime as we know it, when nothing could be further from the real politic of the situation. It is inevitable that Fianna Fail will vote to end that regime as we know it.
How do we know this? To continue its rebuilding project, Fianna Fail must reach into the urban working class, particularly in such places as Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Waterford — that is, from where Sinn Fein and the AAA/ PBP primarily draw support.
Now look at who are the Fianna Fail members of the Oireachtas committee which will consider the expert commission’s report. Alongside Environment spokesman Barry Cowen is Willie O’Dea, based in urban, working-class Limerick; John Lahart, based in urban (largely working-class) Dublin South-West, the constituency that gave us Paul Murphy; and Mary Butler, from Portlaw, 20 miles north-west of urban Waterford, where she was a city councillor and from where she drew the lion’s share of her vote in the last election.
From that alone you can take it to the bank: Fianna Fail will vote to end water changes as we know it — and seek to claim the credit.
This will rile the AAA/ PBP and Sinn Fein no end, but Fianna Fail can plausibly argue that, by entering ‘new politics’ rather than sitting on the sideline, it put itself in a position to finally end water charges.
Seen through the prism of Fianna Fail, however, the end of water charges is not an end in itself. The AAA/ PBP will be most affected, but will continue and seek to find lesser success on other issues around which to develop a far-left political movement. Sinn Fein, however, will still be a live threat to the Fianna Fail rebuilding project.
Sinn Fein remains on the edge of a breakthrough. It is, in my view, in an ‘early adopters’ phase seeking to bridge the chasm to an ‘early majority’ phase. That is if you apply the Rogers’ innovation adoption curve so beloved by marketers everywhere. However, bridging that chasm remains easier said than done.
That said, the existence of Sinn Fein — even at its current level of support — remains the greatest obstacle (and some would say permanent obstacle) blocking Fianna Fail’s return to close-to majorities.
To make further progress, then, Fianna Fail must delve further into the middle-class support of Fine Gael. The abolition of water charges, therefore, may prove a double-edged sword. Opinion polls have shown that there is considerable support for water charges among the middle and upper middle classes, although nowhere near the level claimed by some. After all, who wants to pay for water when you do not have to?
However, middle-class and upper middle-class voters have been convinced by the environmental arguments in favour of polluter pays for water. It is difficult not to be.
So, the upgrading of the water and waste water infrastructure will need to be financed from somewhere. The expert commission is expected to recommend generous allowances. Fine Gael will seize on and support this as justification for the water charge regime it introduced in the first place.
For Fianna Fail, however, that may still prove too similar to the old regime for comfort. So, we can reasonably expect another outcome. That will be the abolition of the current water charge regime with a sizeable portion — more than €100m a year — of property tax, which will rise according to house price increases — and collected by the Revenue Commissioners — to be ring-fenced to upgrade the water system over the next 10 years or so, at which point the return of a charge for water use may or may not be contemplated, depending on the political circumstances at the time.
It may be that the principle of polluter (eventually) pays will be enshrined in legislation to give effect to this. Call it a decent burial. Labour could support such a proposal, and seek to blame Fine Gael for the original mess, and try to re-position itself as open to coalition with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in the future as it was to Fine Gael in the past.
The ‘new politics’ agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail allows both parties reserve their right to adopt differing positions on legislation or resolutions debated by the Dail, consequent to the deliberations of the Oireachtas committee. These resolutions, or that legislation need not be confined to the recommendations of the expert commission, by the way.
The agreement also requires the Government to facilitate the passage of legislation to implement the will of the Dail, whether it be a ‘money bill’ or otherwise. This stipulation goes to the heart of the ‘supply’ side of the ‘confidence and supply’ agreement between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. In other words, Fine Gael is required to bring forward finance legislation to abolish water charges.
Will this be too much for some in Fine Gael to stomach? That is difficult to tell. It almost certainly will not be for Enda Kenny, who is determined to remain as Taoiseach.
But will Leo Varadkar, and others, have the courage of their convictions and finally move on the Enda Kenny leadership at that point? I suspect he will. That is why the odds are still on a summer election.
‘Will Varadkar and others finally move on the Fine Gael leadership?’