IT’S SABOTAGE!

Cowardly U-turn on water leaves a funding black hole, says Alan Kelly

IRELAND’S creaking water infrastructure could spark a national emergency as a result of water charges being scrapped, former environment minister Alan Kelly has claimed.

The Labour deputy leader lashed out at the Government for performing a ‘cowardly’ U-turn on water charges, branding it an ‘act of political, economic and environmental sabotage’.

He pointed to the 50,000 people in Meath and Louth who were left without water this week due to a burst pipeline supplying the Drogheda area.

An Irish Water report has warned that a section of the Vartry Water Supply Scheme – the third largest in the State – is also in ‘imminent danger of collapse’.

Mr Kelly said: ‘The figures affected by any collapse in supplies at Vartry could be as high as half a million people… we would be approaching the status of a national emergency if water supplies could not be provided to half a million householders, businesses and multinationals,’ he warned.

He said water charges were introduced to ensure there would be funds to address these issues following decades of under-investment in our antiquated water network.

‘Irish Water is facing a funding black hole from the end of 2018. There is no money put aside beyond what I provided for up to 2018,’ he said. Irish Water says repairing the Vartry pipeline will cost about €200m and take two years. The funds have been ring-fenced, with work due to begin next year.

However, no funds have been set aside for works beyond 2018. Irish Water confirmed that funds have yet to be secured for €777m worth of infrastructure projects in 2019, €728m in 2020 and €806m in 2021.

The Tipperary TD lashed out at the parties on the left who led the anti-water charge movement, and at the Government for caving in to their demands.

‘The political opportunism of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will leave Ireland’s water supply in tatters within a matter of years if it is not reversed,’ he said.

‘Both parties took the politically cowardly decision to surrender to Sinn Féin and People Before Profit economics and people are now suffering the consequences.’

Water charges were introduced in 2015 by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition while Mr Kelly was environment minister.

The plan was to charge people for what they use in order to cut waste and generate funds to maintain the water infrastructure system. They believed domestic water charges could raise about €270m per year.

However, following a series of public protests, the Oireachtas Water committee decided to scrap the water charges in April.

The decision infuriated Mr Kelly, who believes the Government should have taken the tough, responsible decision.

‘The coalition of convenience between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on Irish Water has engaged in an act of political, economic and environmental sabotage,’ he said.

Significant unease is growing in the cabinet, with one senior minister saying: ‘Voters are not happy with the current state of affairs. Increasingly people are saying that water charges made sense; that the U-turn was a mistake.’

Mr Kelly said the decision to scrap the charges has ‘placed billions of euros of spending on schools and hospitals in jeopardy’.

‘A very fine chunk of Leo’s proposed €80bn capital plan will be needed for water alone,’ he said. ‘On water charges politicians have sown a bitter crop of opportunism but it is the people, or rather taxpayers, who will reap a harvest of salt and ashes.

‘Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could have engaged in an honest dialogue with the people but they decided their template on this would be set by Paul Murphy and Sinn Féin.

‘It is a shocking indictment of new politics that instead of engaging in a straight and clear way with the people and explaining how and why the charge was necessary they shivered and turned away. So much for leadership.

‘Not since Fianna Fáil abolished rates in 1977 as the first step on their road to bankrupting the State for the first time, has a more regressive step been taken.’

Mr Kelly expressed particular concern about a funding black hole for Irish Water from next year.

‘We are at the loss of a billion euros a year we could have borrowed, off the books, on the basis of €271m in charges.’

He warned that these funds will now have to come ‘from the capital plan at the expense of schools, roads and hospitals’.

An Irish Water spokesman said it had ‘outlined our priorities in the Irish Water business plan according to a risk-based approach to asset management’. It said funding to implement them is guaranteed by the Government up to 2018.

Mr Kelly warned: ‘The issue of water… will continue to be a blight. The consequences of failing to fund will provide a lethal fiscal and infrastructural legacy.’

Referring to the abolition of rates in 1977 and the exorbitant income tax rates that followed, Mr Kelly said: ‘Politics is failing the people of the country again. Utopian populism is winning again. It’s Groundhog Day. We will regret it, just as we did in ’77. Nothing has happened since to change my analysis.’

‘Imminent danger of collapse’ ‘Utopian populism is winning. We’ll regret it’