FG’s ruinous obsession with water

(and, yes, there is a deadly waterfall ahead)

FINE Gael’s morbid attachment to the €2.6bn corpse of Irish Water is one of the most damaging mistakes ever made by an Irish political party. The fact that Fine Gael has persisted with its water policy starkly demonstrates the great differences between that party and Fianna Fáil.

Fine Gael is probably right about the principle of charging people for water, but what’s principle got to do with it? This is politics. And it’s politics in a climate where people are still suffering from years of austerity. Yet they can’t understand why punters don’t agree with them that water should be paid for. They don’t understand the resilient passions behind the opposition to water charges.

Fianna Fáil have taken many differing stances on water in recent years because they don’t believe in holding any principle. Fianna Fáil only believes in holding power. Whatever policy will get them into power, or keep them there, well, that’s their policy. History proves it. Charlie Haughey, Bertie Ahern and the boys weren’t fans of economists but they slavishly followed the philosophy of John Maynard Keynes on U-turns. Criticised for inconsistency, Keynes reputedly replied: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’

Charlie, after trying to spend his way out of trouble in the early 1980s, learned his lesson. When he returned to power in 1987 he instituted the savage cuts that saved the economy. When a policy was going wrong and costing Fianna Fáil popularity, Bertie jettisoned it. Mistakes like PPARs (a costly health IT system), decentralisation, and the infamous E voting machines (only €50m); what happened to those disasters? They caused doubt, so they were cut out. Money already spent meant nothing.

MICHEÁL MARTIN has had a clatter of positions on water charges since his party committed to introducing charging in the 2010 IMF bailout deal. It is not important to list them. What is important is that Fine Gael introduced water charges and lost 26 seats in 2016. Labour, their coalition partners, were annihilated. Sinn Féin changed their position on water (to opposing them) and did better. Paul Murphy and the other Independents who led the charge against water tax were victorious.

Fine Gael sees Fianna Fáil as the enemy; Fianna Fáil sees enemies everywhere. Fianna Fáil secured the suspension of water charges in return for supporting Fine Gael. Then a Fianna Fáil TD told me in the Leinster House visitor’s bar last summer that ‘you never lose votes in this country for opposing a tax’. I could see what was coming water charges would not be coming back.

A few weeks ago a Fianna Fáil frontbench TD explained their position.

‘The first thing that would happen if you brought back water charges is that you give one of the most powerful platforms back to the Shinners and that AAA.

‘You don’t give platforms to your enemy,’ he exclaimed, ‘you don’t give ammo to your enemy, for God’s sake.’

He said the suspension of water charges had neutralised Sinn Féin and the leftists. They would now neutralise Fine Gael.

Fine Gael didn’t see any of this coming.

In March 2011, Fine Gael convinced Labour to sign up to Irish Water. Then-environment minister Phil Hogan, bullish and inarticulate, could not adequately explain why this €2.6bn superquango was required to administer water. He blundered ahead.

Alarm bells were ringing by summer 2013, the political press lobby was briefed that minister Hogan would be transferred out of domestic politics to the European Commissioner’s job. He would be the man to introduce property tax and water charges, then get out of Dodge. Taoiseach Enda Kenny knew there was a storm coming but did not move to avoid it.

In autumn 2013 water metering began. In January 2014 Irish Water CEO John Tierney gave a car-crash interview with RTÉ’s Seán O’Rourke. He disclosed that €50m had already been spent on consultants.

No one in Fine Gael shouted Stop! Protests exploded and opposition to water charges became a national movement.

How did they fail to see the danger?

WELL, this was a Government with ministers who were unaccustomed to power. Like the rest of us they were traumatised by the crash and afraid of Europe’s rather unclear demands on water.

Then there was that old Fine Gael arrogance. I vividly recall a conversation with two ministers at the door of the private member’s bar in Leinster House in May 2014.

One had been canvassing in the local elections and he told me about dropping into a pub at 5pm on a Friday. The pub, he sneered, was full of labourers who complained about water charges. He proudly told one that the weekly charges would cost less than the pint he was drinking.

Fine Gael seemed to take to the austerity imposed by the EU with glee. After the election was surely the time, with a new leader on the horizon, to accept that water wasn’t working.

Yet a Fine Gael TD said this to me: ‘We have seen 26 of our colleagues lose their seats defending Irish Water, and we can’t just give up on it now.’

That’s a suicidal logic. Like an army that has lost 10,000 men hopelessly trying to take a hill, sacrificing another 10,000 in their honour.

And still they persist. The excuses become more desperate.

Now Minister Simon Coveney says that we will be fined for failing to comply with the EU directive that we introduce water charges. The EU directive isn’t precise. Over the last 15 years Ireland has evaded literally hundreds of EU directives.

Only two weeks ago Ireland was found to have ignored a sewage treatment directive. The threatened fines rarely materialise.

Enda Kenny has achieved a lot. When he took over as leader in 2002, he and his then-friend Frank Flannery reformed Fine Gael. They turned the party into a pragmatic, slick, ruthless machine by aping Fianna Fáil. Last week the unemployment rate was 6.6%, the lowest since July 2008.

The seeds of destruction lay in the manner Kenny and Fine Gael defeated a flailing Fianna Fáil in 2011. Fine Gael and Labour, with 113 seats had the largest – 30 seats – majority in history. They could get away with mistakes, they became complacent. Irish Water destroyed both parties.

The complacency continues. The miscomprehension of the dangers of Irish Water continues. Participants in the Oireachtas Water Committee tell me that Fine Gael attendance at the meeting was sporadic. There was no strategy. There was no coordination of questioning.

Fianna Fáil had their game faces on, they had a grand strategy – prove that water charges would not work to win back votes.

And still Coveney wants to introduce charging only for excessive use.

Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the Independents see the danger – charging for excessive use is still charging.

And such is the mistrust of Fine Gael governments on water that everybody believes they would lower the excessive use limits to sneak full charging back in.

We all make mistakes. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin recognise errors and change.

Fine Gael thinks it knows better.