Do We Need Water Charges And Are They Justified?

NO: WATER CHARGES ARE A FORM OF DOUBLE TAXATION

Since 1977 the United Nations has defined clean drinking water and sanitation as fundamental human rights that must be upheld irrespective of people’s ability to pay. Whether you are rich or poor, water is essential to a healthy life, lived with dignity and self-respect.

All sides to the current debate agree that such a vital resource must be paid for. The conflict arises over who should pay and on what basis.
Currently, Irish water is paid for out of direct taxation. Citizens contribute on the basis of their income and receive their water on the basis of their human needs. The principles underpinning these arrangements are fairness, equality and social solidarity.
Fine Gael and Labour are determined to overturn these principles. Following a model pioneered by the IMF throughout Africa, the Government wants to charge for water on the basis of use. Their strategy is to offer teaser rates to soften up the population, but the basic principle is that the user pays.
Enda Kenny and Alan Kelly insist that such a system is ‘fair’. They point to other commodities, insisting that if we want to heat our homes, or feed our kids, we must be prepared to pay for the privilege. The problems with this argument are basically threefold.
Firstly, there will be no reduction in our current level of taxes – which includes a €1 billion outlay for water services – meaning that the Government expect us to pay on the double. Secondly, the government’s argument ignores the fact that capitalism generates obscene amounts of inequality. According to the latest research, the top 10% of the population hold about 12 times the wealth of the bottom 50%.
To treat people with such unequal resources in an ‘equal’ manner is inherently unfair. Under the current proposals one millionaire will pay less for their water than two old age pensioners for example. The final problem is that commodifying services ignores the human costs of the most vulnerable.
Currently, around 2,000 people die each year due to fuel poverty, whilst 54% of pensioners are struggling to even heat their homes. The figures for child poverty are even starker, with almost 30% of Irish children living their lives in consistent poverty. Dáil deputies are unlikely to face such deprivation, but in a democracy policies must surely be designed to meet the needs of every citizen. The fight against water charges is a fight to ensure that this begins to happen.
Unlike anything that has gone before it, the Right2Water Campaign is a mass participation, grassroots and increasingly politicised social movement. Government spin-doctors have consistently tried to separate water charges from the issue of austerity, but even the dogs in the street can see the links between the two. The global rich want to force taxpayers and the poor to pay for their crisis, whilst the R2W campaign is determined to stop them. If the Irish State can gift €8.75 billion in interest payments to wealthy bondholders, it can easily afford the €1 billion or so to fix the leaks and repair the water infrastructure. This fight is rapidly moving from a campaign about water charges to a struggle for real forms of participatory democracy.
People power is finally on the move in Ireland and it is scaring the living daylights out of the old establishment.

Brian O’Boyle is an activist with the Right2Water Campaign in Sligo and a member of the People Before Profit Alliance. He lectures in economics at St Angela’s College and is the co-author of the recently published Austerity Ireland – the Failure of Irish Capitalism

YES: WITHOUT THEM THE FUTURE OF OUR WATER SUPPLY IS IN JEOPARDY

It is not an exaggeration to say Dublin will run out of water in ten years. In fact, most cities of Dublin’s size have a spare capacity of 20% in their water supply – Dublin has between 1% and 4% to spare in its water system. Remember the last Web Summit in 2012? When all of those investors went back to their hotels or into the restaurants in the evenings, there was a water use restriction in place, meaning they couldn’t shower and had to buy bottled water to drink.
 
Twenty-two thousand people can’t drink their water in Ireland; we have 800 kilometres of pipe in Dublin that is over 100 years old and almost half our treated water is unaccounted for through leaks. Why is this the case? Because we have looked at our water system from the perspective of individual counties, and not as a national resource. Can you imagine if we had a rail system that was only developed on a county-by-county basis, where the rail line running between Dublin and Galway was managed by five separate companies? It sounds ludicrous – yet that is exactly how we have been managing our water system.
We have also been running our water system without serious capital investment. For most people, buying a house is impossible without a mortgage, as the day-to-day income is not sufficient for a single capital investment. Our water system is the same, and if we are to improve it, we need the water system to be able to borrow, so that it can fix the leaks and build treatment centres, and so that we are not left in a situation where the raw sewage of 42 towns is flowing straight into our rivers and seas.
In 2015, we are looking at the potential of beach closures and swimming bans in some of our key towns precisely because of this. Allowing our water system to borrow independently of Government means that funding for water, of which we need a minimum of €600 million per year for the next ten years, will not be in the same queue for funding as our schools, hospitals, child benefit or even funding for housing services. There is a reason other countries manage water the way the Government are now proposing – even Cuba has water charges.
The way we have managed water in this country has been simply insane and should not be preserved. We have made mistakes as a Government, but establishing Irish Water was not one of them. People had concerns regarding the affordability of bills, PPS numbers and the future privatisation of Irish Water. We have simplified the charging structure and introduced a water conservation grant, meaning the net charge is at an affordable rate of €1.15 or €3 a week, depending on the number of adults living in your house. There is no longer a requirement for PPS and legislation will be introduced compelling future Governments to consult with the Irish people prior to any efforts at privatisation. I may not have been at cabinet at the time of the first decision, but it was necessary to listen to the genuine concerns many people had raised about Irish Water and to act accordingly.
I would also question the real goal of some of those leading the protests. If this was really about water, why haven’t they been protesting outside the many group water schemes in rural areas that have been up and running for generations? Why are they not calling for the abolition of these? Yes, treated water is a right. So is housing, electricity, heat and access to public transport – yet these are all paid for. There are people who have been put to the pin of their collar financially. Irish Water will distinguish between those who want to pay but can’t and those who refuse to pay. Every effort will be made to accommodate the former.
I would ask people to give the new charges due consideration and examine them in the context of last month’s budget. It is now a simple, clear and affordable system of charges. In ten years, the children of Dublin will have difficulty accessing water if we do not get this right. Then it will be too late to protest at the lack of water infrastructure in Ireland.