Public Meeting No Water Charges St Joseph's National School Macroom Rd Coolock Thurs 11 Feb, 8pm

dublin | environment | event notice Saturday January 30, 2010 15:49 by Martin O'Sullivan - People Before Profit, Swp, martin.osullivan at peoplebeforeprofit dot ie 66 Edenmore Avenue, Edenmore, Dublin 5 Co. Dublin, Ireland +353878289243

Water Charges wont save water

Fianna Fáil and the Greens now seem determined to make another attempt at forcing domestic users to pay on the double for our water.

The Green Party leader, John Gormley, is leading the charge. He said recently that it would cost around €1bn to upgrade the water network and that the Government intended to raise the money from domestic users, leaving householders paying hundreds of euro a year in addition to the tax we already pay for public services.

Water charges on the way?

Fianna Fáil and the Greens now seem determined to make another attempt at forcing domestic users to pay on the double for our water.

The Green Party leader, John Gormley, is leading the charge. He said recently that it would cost around €1bn to upgrade the water network and that the Government intended to raise the money from domestic users, leaving householders paying hundreds of euro a year in addition to the tax we already pay for public services.

Gormley wants to introduce a water metering system with charges applying to any water used above a free allocation. It is claimed that only when users have to pay for water will they realise the value of it and stop wasting it. Gormley took full advantage of the water shortages during the ‘big freeze’ in January to ‘prove’ this point. If people had been paying for water, they wouldn’t have left their taps running.

But the facts tell a different story. Years of under-investment mean that up to 50 per cent of water in some areas is lost through leaking pipes. The antiquated pipes made them particularly prone to bursting during the big freeze. Instead of trying to introduce a water metering system that would be expensive to install and costly to administer, the Government should invest in upgrading the network and encourage water conservation measures.

We don’t need drinking quality water to flush toilets or wash our clothes, and certainly not to wash cars or water gardens. There are proven systems for the collection of rainwater and ‘grey water’ for functions that do not require water of drinking standard. Grey water is the wastewater produced from washing activities, between 50 to 80 per cent of the total. Installation of dual flush toilets, which handle solid and liquid waste with different rates of flushing, would also make a huge difference.

But behind all ‘environmental’ arguments used in favour of water charges is a longer term agenda. Having succeeded in forcing through the bin tax in most areas, the Government now wants to do the same with water. The aim is undermine the provision of public services, paid for through general taxation, in order to move towards a system of user charges.

Once a charging system has been introduced, the service has a price, and private contractors or corporations can take over the service and run it for profit, leading to rising charges. This has been the experience in Britain, where tarrifs increased by 46 per cent during the first nine years after privatisation, while the operating profits of the companies involved more than doubled.

And we’ve seen how bin charges here have gradually been increased, starting off with miminal charges for tags or ‘per lift’, followed by the addition of annual charges. And now, in the latest Dublin City Council budget, the waiver for those on low incomes has been removed. It had been argued by the supporters of the bin tax that people on low incomes would be protected but ultimately they weren’t, just as we argued at the time. The same thing would be very likely to happen were they to succeed in introducing water charges.

And that’s where we can make a difference. The water charges campaign in the mid 1990s scored a major victory for people power when, through a mass campaign of resistance, it forced the then Labour/Fine Gael government to abolish water charges, not just in Dublin but across the country.

We can defend that victory and prevent the introduction of water charges if we start organising the fightback now.