I am a fool, an idiot and a mug... for obeying the law. Well, I won’t do that again!

IHAVE paid my water charges to date but I have no intention of paying a cent more. Why not? Because I have been a mug, an idiot, a fool. I did what I believed to be right and acted as a responsible, compliant citizen. I also pay my residential property tax, and the TV licence fee. I keep my car taxed and insured, and because it is an 18-yearold Saab, I submit it annually for the NCT. When I had dogs, I bought licences for them, even though only a tiny fraction of owners bother doing so and never face censure for their dereliction of duty.

I do not pay for any of these things because I want to – last year, they cost me €1,953 combined, and I truly would prefer to be able to hold on to that money – but because I am obliged to. It is the law, whether I like it or not.

Now, though, water is back centre stage on the political agenda, as Fianna Fáilers have let it be known that the suspension of charges will be part of any deal they might make to form a government with Fine Gael, or at the very least support a minority administration.

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What it also is saying, though, is that anyone who actually did pay will not get their money back. That also is the view of socialist TD Clare Daly, who had this to say to Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio yesterday.

When asked what would happen to those of us who paid, she said: ‘It was a legally levied charge which they chose to pay and that’s fine. If the charge is abolished now, do I think they should get the money back? No, I don’t.’

Mr O’Rourke interjected. ‘How is that fair?’ he asked.

‘The fairness is the campaign will have succeeded in abolishing the charge and those people will similarly benefit from not having to pay it into the future,’ Ms Daly replied.

Mr O’Rourke put it to her that what she was effectively saying was: ‘Tough.’

‘I’m not saying “tough”,’ she said, but it sounded an awful lot like it to these ears, and the reason why it sounded like that was as a consequence of the first sentence I have repeated here, so let’s look at it again – ‘It was a legally levied charge which they chose to pay.’

Now ‘chose’ is an interesting word, especially in the same breath as ‘ legally levied’, so allow me be absolutely categorical. I did not ‘choose’ to pay anything.

I did not wake up the day the first Irish Water bill dropped on my mat and treat it the way I might choose to have my eggs poached or boiled. I paid it because a democratically elected government introduced it and did so, as Clare Daly pointed out, legally.

Yes, it ran contrary to election promises. Yes, the guillotined debate that brought Irish Water into existence was disgraceful. Yes, the fact that it is effectively double taxation, given that we already pay for water through the portion of motor tax that was passed on to local authorities, rankles, but it was nonetheless legal.

And what happened? Anyone who registered for Irish Water was entitled to the €100 conservation grant, even i f they actually had not paid their bills, and as many as 400,000 households may have received the grant without ever paying for water at all.

As it happens, I made a few quid myself, because my total metered charges for the year came to just €88, so I was 12 quid up on the deal when you factor in the grant.

Crucially, though, I did actually pay, yet others who didn’t pay not only went unpenalised, they actually were rewarded, with money, for their civil disobedience. It is a compelling indictment of the utter ineptitude on which the entire Irish Water project was founded, and a reminder that the company is marbled with a streak of incompetence probably unparalleled in the history of the State.

Ms Daly denies that what she is saying effectively boils down to ‘tough’, but that really is the only conclusion to draw. On social media, the water warriors, the people who linked arms across the entrances to estates to keep the meter installers at bay, showed yesterday that they actually believe I am part of their problem, a collaborationist and a quisling. My paying made it more difficult for them to resist, the logic runs. If everyone in the country had refused to pay, the fight would have been over sooner, but because I was compliant, I deserve everything I get, short of having my head shaved and being paraded through the streets in shame.

Laughable

So where does this leave us? In short, in a place where anyone who personally takes issue with a charge levied by the State can simply refuse to pay it. In a given week, if you watch only BBC, UTV and Sky, should you have to pay the licence fee to RTÉ? Based on the water logic, probably not.

If, however, you do, it seems you now have to remember one thing – you ‘chose’ to do so. That’s right, your legal and civil obligation to pay charges legally constituted and imposed is seen by the hard left as little more than a whim. In one of their favourite terms, so juvenile and hackneyed now it is laughable, you are one of the ‘sheeple’.

So let’s say – and yes, we’re in a parallel universe here, but bear with me – the left actually had the numbers to form a government and went ahead with its plans to impose a higher rate of tax on those earning over €100,000. What if the self- employed on that sort of money simply decided not to pay the extra, but to continue paying the existing rates? Here’s what would happen. They would be publicly vilified, and rightly so, because they would be refusing to submit to the rule of law and the wish of the government.

Yet, on the basis of what has happened with Irish Water, it would be that very government that codified their right to withhold taxes and charges, because the left is now telling us we ‘choose’ to pay them, instead of reminding us we are compelled to do so. This is an extraordinary suggestion, and it paves the way for civil disobedience on a grand scale. It sets two halves of the community on a collision course – those who reluctantly accept new taxes and charges, and those who have not paid a solitary cent.

So, until any new government tells me exactly what is happening with Irish Water, I’m done with it. If they promise me that no-one will pay again and that those of us who did will get our money back, fine. If they tell me that I won’t be getting my money back, but those who did not pay will be chased f or arrears, that also is fine.

But if they tell me that I’m getting nothing, and also that people who did not pay won’t be pursued, then I have a new relationship with my democracy. And, trust me, it is not going to be a harmonious one.