Eddie Hobbs: Constitutional betrayal of our right to water

Water, as well as the nation’s other resources, ‘belong to the State’ as stated in the 1937 Constitution, but Article 10 needs to be rewritten, writes Eddie Hobbs

Today’s water protesters, whether they realise it yet or not, campaign on a fissure between the Irish people and the State, which, left unaddressed, will keep recurring until the issue of who owns our natural resources is properly addressed by constitutional amendment, anything short of which is merely tinkering with the symptoms of a carefully-laid flaw.

In the1930s, Europe was grappling with the destruction of imperial empires after the First World War. Fearful of socialism, it venerated the state and its new strong leaders, breeding, at the extreme, a new kind of government –authoritarian and all-knowing. Invoking the primacy of the state, fascism took a grip on Germany and Italy, while clerical fascism also gripped Spain, as observed by Eamon de Valera, influencing the writing of the 1937 Constitution which he supervised.