More issues at stake than just water in government talks
As somebody, perhaps a coward, who tries to be as compliant as possible with the law of the land, I paid the charges, despite my pressurised financial situation at the time, and despite the very strong opposition to those charges from predictable sources.
In the event, the protesters won the day and those of us who had obeyed the law and paid up, were the unlucky ones, whereas most of those who refused to pay walked away.
I have a real sense of deja vu at the moment. I have paid my water charges because it is the law of the land and I fundamentally believe that water charges are warranted and very necessary.
However, I now fear that those who have refused to pay and flouted the law will walk away unscathed once again, and for law-abiding citizens it will be a case of tough luck. Perhaps there is a moral to the story, but time will tell.
I may be wrong about this because as far as we know, nothing has yet been decided. However, the risks are clear.
The notion that water charges would be suspended for a period of nine months and a commission would then be set up to examine the issue, is a total nonsense and just the sort of political cop-out that characterises much of what passes for political discourse in this country.
We can be certain that suspension is the same thing as abolition. The possibility, then, would be that those who paid the charge are treated as just another hard luck story. If that transpires, I suspect there will be political hell to pay. Certainly from a personal perspective, such an outcome would make me very angry and it is not something I would allow those people responsible to forget for a long while.
Given the relatively tiny amount of money that the charges were set to raise in any event, I find it extraordinary that it is an issue that caused so much damage to the last government and which is now hindering the formation of a new government.
The opposition from the usual suspects is not difficult to comprehend.
However, at one level, I find the approach adopted by Fianna Fáil as extraordinary. At another level, it is clear that its approach is purely motivated by the Sinn Féin political threat to the self-proclaimed Republican Party. It is difficult to legislate for irrational politics. And I have long since given up trying.
The bottom line is that there are much bigger issues of concern to rational taxpayers and voters in this country than water.
The health service is a shambles, law and order has become a bit of an oxymoron, and the education system is creaking at the edges, particularly the all-important third-level sector.
There is also the small matter of the emerging threats to our economic wellbeing, both domestic and external. These are very real and very palpable.
This week the Department of Finance published its Draft Stability Programme Update, which upon Dáil approval, will be scrutinised by Brussels and will effectively become our medium-term fiscal plan.
The report is forecasting strong growth of 4.9% this year, which looks very realistic based on what we know about the economy so far this year.
However, of more interest are the warning shots that the report has sent across the bows of any incoming government.
The key domestic threats are focused on competitiveness broadly defined, and particularly the potential for housing supply to undermine competitiveness by undermining labour mobility. The external threats revolve around China, emerging markets, financial market volatility, and Brexit.
Of particular interest is the sensitivity analysis of the economic impact of a 5% decline in the value of sterling on the back of Brexit fears. The department estimates that such depreciation, if sustained, would knock 0.6% off growth this year and 0.8% next year.
These are significant effects from a relatively minor exchange rate movement, but they should highlight to our political masters that there are much more important issues out there other than water. Irish politics really does worry me.
