The opposition’s solution to a creaking infrastructure is to get the rich to pay for it, writes Michael Clifford

AT TIMES like these, it’s customary to invoke an alien being. What would an extra terrestial think of how we’re dealing with our most precious resource if he landed here from outer space? What would he think of the mess of Irish Water, and how water is being used as a political tool?

In fact, there’s no requirement to venture into the firmament to locate a being that would find the whole thing ludicrous. Just ask anybody from any other developed country in the world.

First off, there’s the business of water meters. The installation of meters in many areas involves turning up for work before 5am and finishing soon after 8am when the protesters appear, as if the workers were actually marking out homes from which the first born would be removed for slaughter. Is there anywhere in the world where measuring the use of a resource generates such anger, not to mind the odd incident of violence?

Then there is the “conservation grant” of €100, which has nothing to do with conservation. It is in fact a political inducement to get householders to sign up for registration. More than 70% of householders have thus registered, but less than half of those who will be liable for a charge have paid.

Why would they, when there’s no penalty for not paying? Is there any charge anywhere in the world that is dealt with as if it’s “voluntary”, not to mind one that has hit a nerve in the national psyche?

The Government wants Irish Water to be treated as an “off the books” commercial entity, operating on a commercial basis. This entity does not charge according to use of water, and it offers a conservation grant that resembles a Late Late Show hand-out for everybody in the audience. In addition, much of the work that Irish Water is supposed to be doing is being carried out by personnel from local authorities. As such, the current design of Irish Water and all its works resembles a cross between a fly-by-night operator, and the plaything of a tin pot dictator.

The boys from the EU agency Eurostat took one look at it, laughed uproariously and told the Irish Government to go take a hike.

All of which would be a great victory for those opposed to the whole concept of water charges if only they had any credibility themselves.

Most of those driving the opposition are coming from a political place that is informed by neither principle nor ideology. Groups like the Anti Austerity Alliance and Sinn Féin describe themselves as “left wing” and suggest that access to free water — and the treatment of waste water — is a “human right”.

As things stand, around 400,000 citizens in the country have been paying for water through group schemes for decades, and none have declared themselves victims of human rights abuses.

The anti-charge brigade consider water charges as the twin of the property tax, making them the only left-wing groups to ever oppose a property tax since Karl Marx first put pen to paper.

Last September, these same groups had precious little consideration for the basic human right of housing, when they voted on Dublin City Council — and other local authorities — to reduce the property tax instead of spending money on the homeless. (Fine Gael did also, but at least they have the excuse of espousing right-wing values).

The opposition’s solution to a creaking infrastructure, and the pumping of raw sewage into the sea, is to get the rich to pay for it. Anybody who believes this is feasible lost sight of the world around the time the Berlin wall came down.

There is a case for further taxes to be levied on high earners, but the idea that the scope is there to cover the investment required is delusional. In any event, asking the better-off to pay a greater share, using such funds to render water and waste water treatment free for the rest of us, rather than ploughing it into issues like child poverty, is nothing short of obscene.

The issue came to the fore just as the night of recession was beginning to lift.

The so-called anti-austerity brigade saw this as a last ditch opportunity to push for a radical shift in politics. Throw in understandable anger among the wider population at how the matter was being handled, and a perfect battleground opened up. That’s how things stand in this allegedly developed country as we face into the first post-recession election.

The whole affair has exposed the incompetence of the Government and the posturing of the opposition. It is now inevitable that Irish Water and charges will be a serious election issue, and it will be a plague on all houses.

Fine Gael and Labour face either capitulation on the whole water charges process, or be forced to defend Irish Water and all its works. The opposition will make hay on the shambles that exists, and pledge that it must be done away with.

In all likelihood, if Irish Water survives the election, it will face transmogrification afterwards, particularly, as seems likely, if the current coalition is not returned in its present form. Thereafter, once the smoke around the toxic body clears, the real question will have to be answered — will water be subject to a charge ultimately on the basis of use, or will the cost revert to direct taxation?

If the latter option wins out, then there will be two outcomes in the short to medium term. In the first instance, the investment required to ensure that our infrastructure befits a modern country will not be made. That will have serious consequences for citizens primarily, but also for attracting foreign business.

There will be some investment, but not enough. And that investment will largely come at the expense of other services, with a disproportionate impact on those most reliant on the State’s support. There is nothing surer than that.

There is a complete lack of honesty on all sides in this debate. In a mature democracy, the government would have presented the new regime as a necessary development to prevent the mistakes of the past, and it would have ensured that all fears of privatisation would have been dealt with at the outset.

Those opposed would not be dishing out the waffle that we already pay for water, at a time when kettles have to be boiled in some parts of the country, shortages loom in the big conurbations, and waste treatment facilities are creaking.

Of course the biggest problem with water is that it’s a long-term issue. Those who shout loudest today will no longer be on the stage if the country sleepwalks into a crisis, just as it wandered into many other crises. It’s no coincidence that the only political party to really give a fig about the future — the Greens — are making little impact on the electorate.

By and large, the Irish political culture does not do long term. There’s no votes in that for politicians, no immediate benefits for the electorate.