‘We won’t be bullied into water tax’

More than 400 people packed the Metropole Hotel in Cork last night for the launch of the ‘We Won’t Pay’ anti-water charges campaign, organised by the Anti-Austerity Alliance.

Those in attendance heard Socialist TD Joe Higgins give a rousing address in which he compared the successful water tax campaign of the 1990s with the opposition to the current charges.

He said that if water charges were allowed to be implemented, it would, after the universal social charge, represent the most serious attack on working-class people and their living standards in the past six years.

He also challenged the assessment by Irish Water that three-adult households would pay less than €400 a year, and four-adult households just under €500 — saying it was based on false and unreliable data.

“Irish Water is grossly underestimating the amount of water that households actually use,” he said. “According to them, each person in a four-adult household uses 88 litres a day. But studies by the Department of the Environment show that the real figure is 148 litres a day. Even in Denmark, the average use is 114 litres. This means that the rate for a four-adult household could be €908 a year, and not the €483 estimated by Irish Water.”

Mr Higgins drew thunderous applause when he vowed to repeat the success of the 1990s campaign, saying the Government was in a weakened state and that widespread opposition unnerved them.

He said a win for Paul Murphy, the Alliance candidate in the Dublin South West by-election, would make the Coalition sit up.

The meeting also heard from Socialist councillor Lil O’Donnell, who said: “Let this Government know we have had enough. We want to pay our fair share but we are damned to pay a bill for a second time, and double-damned to be bullied into doing so.”

Socialist Party councillor Mick Barry told the meeting that it was only by collective opposition that the water charges would be defeated.

“We can win,” he said. “Mass non-payment defeated Maggie Thatcher’s poll tax. We defeated the water charges in the 90s and we can defeat them again.”

He also said that the Government’s longer-term strategy was to make Irish Water hugely profitable and then sell it on: “Big international corporations are already knocking at the door.”