Kicking Irish Water to touch is latest in election flip-flops
Wasn’t the issue of water charges supposed to transform Irish politics? Instead it seems to involve old-school electioneering at its worst: fudging, populism, flipflopping and bare-faced hypocrisy. Witness this exchange from RTÉ’s Six One News this week:
Bryan Dobson: ‘And what about the water charge. Is it absolutely gone, as far as you’re concerned?’
Micheál Martin: ‘Yes… for the lifetime of the next government, it’s gone.’
BD: ‘So that means it might come back, might it?’
MM: ‘Whatever happens in a subsequent government... We can only be responsible for the next five years and that’s the commitment… This has been a debacle Brian… an absolute farce…’
BD: ‘If it’s a debacle, it is one that was born in the final days of the government in which you served.’
MM: ‘In 2009, before the Troika… Simon Coveney said Fine Gael wanted to set up a regulated utility…’
BD: ‘On September 15, 2010, Fianna Fáil drafted legislation to establish a new water agency and remove the legal prohibition on charging for domestic water services. Brian Lenihan was behind the plan… he favoured the introduction of Irish Water. Two of your current candidates said (they) support the proposal… what we’re witnessing now is a flip-flop isn’t it?’
MM: ‘No, not at all. In fact we were behind… at the time there was the idea for water meters coming in for conservation purposes, okay, and the idea of water charges.’
BD: ‘This was your government’s plan before the Troika even arrived?’
MM: ‘No, sorry, not in terms of the actual establishment of Irish Water itself… the document itself, it talks about the feasibility of an entity but it doesn’t commit to it. Charges, yes, in terms of water meters.’
BD: ‘So there was a commitment to go ahead with water charges?’
MM: ‘Yeah. That was part of the original four-year plan… and the Troika thing.’
Sinn Féin are as bad – one assembly member is on record defending charges in the North, where they are rolling out meters. Northern Ireland Water recently had to deny water charges are imminent after sending out ‘how do you want to pay?’ letters to householders.
And instead of standing up for Irish Water as the battle to get people to accept water charges hangs in the balance, the ‘conservationist’ Greens seek to undermine it on obscure points.
I don’t blame politicians for supporting water charges – just for not sticking to their guns.
Most countries, including communist Cuba, have water charges as it’s the only way to stop people wasting the stuff.
The only ones that didn’t, in one international report, were North Korea and Turkmenistan, whom we will soon join once more if SF and FF have their way.
Was Micheál Martin evasive about future water charges as he knows they are necessary, and even if he abolishes them, that they
change: Micheál Martin will come back in eventually when all the fuss dies down?
Worse than all this hypocrisy is the Opposition’s plan to scrap the company Irish Water, because, it seems, the lynch mob will settle for nothing less.
Mr Martin told Brian Dobson he wants to get rid of water charges because ‘families need a break right now’.
But who does he think is going to pay the €240m bill to abolish Irish Water, which employs thousands?
He says redundancies will be voluntary but what if workers, who are blameless for the fiasco, don’t want to give up their jobs? Many worked with water all their lives, what else can they do? And who will then oversee our water system them?
Mr Martin glossed over the €5.5bn needed for repairs, saying it will come from general taxation. Will hardpressed families have to pick up this tab, too? Scrapping Irish Water could prove as politically disastrous as setting it up was.