Louth PBP representative promises mass opposition to water charges

People Before Profit's Louth representative James Renaghan has said that “reports last week that the Government is considering introducing excess water charges, confirms Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have never given up on their intention to charge us for water”.

Commenting on reports in the media in the past week that the Government is considering the introduction of so-called excess water charges, Mr Renaghan said that: “It's been reported that excess water charges will be imposed on households using 70% more than the average household consumption.

“This figure was set in 2019 at the Oireachtas Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services. But at the time it was shown that average household water usage was 125 litres per person per day here compared with 140 litres per person per day in Britain where there were and still are water charges. We do not have widespread excessive usage of water and where it exists, it is mainly due to leaks. People Before Profit have been calling for many years for those leaks to be fixed”.

“It was also shown back in 2019 that because of how the usage of an average household is calculated, four-person households would be hit particularly hard, as they would have exactly the same allowance as a one-person household. As a result, four-person families would face charges when they use just 20% more than average”.

“It should also be noted that approximately one third of homes don’t have a water meter, so it will be almost impossible for the Government to introduce a system for charging for ‘excess usage’ of water”.

“There is no doubt that if the government manages to impose ‘excess usage’ water charges they will reduce the ‘normal usage’ allowance until everyone is paying for water. The 2017 legislation even includes a provision to allow the reduction of the charges threshold of 1.7 times the average usage.

"It is also revealing that previous commitments to hold a referendum on public ownership of water is not in the Programme for Government. No one should be in any doubt where the Government wants to go with this."

Mr Renaghan added: “With no elections expected for several years, the Government is likely to try again to impose water charges on people. But they will again face mass opposition from people who, after waging a successful campaign of non-payment and mass protest to defeat water charges, won't accept them being brought in through a different route”.