Siptu wants ‘waste tariff’

Siptu has called on the Government to redesignate Irish Water as a non-commercial semi-state company which would supply enough water to meet domestic needs and use meters to impose a “tariff on waste”.

In his opening speech to delegates at the union’s biennial delegate conference in Cork’s City Hall last night, the union’s president, Jack O’Connor said the water charges campaign “is not and it has never been simply about how we pay for our public water supply”.

“However, insofar as it is actually about that, our primary concern is with ensuring that this most vital of all public goods remains in public ownership and that it attracts the dramatically increased levels of investment that are required,” he said.

Mr O’Connor said Siptu actually supports the concept of a public utility, in the nature of Irish Water, to manage the increased levels of public investment required in the system “which would never be made under the old city and county council arrangement”.

“I want to call on the Government to set a date for the referendum to change the Constitution, so as to prohibit the future privatisation of the public water supply,” he said. “I want to call on it to redesignate Irish Water as a non-commercial semi-state company which will enable it to supply every household with the amount of water they need to meet all their domestic needs, free of charge and use the meters to impose a tariff on waste which would actually be a real conservation measure.”

Mr O’Connor also confirmed his union will today launch a campaign for decent work “to encourage and equip the people who are lowest paid and most exploited to organise to assert their right to a decent job, a decent dividend and decent life”.

He referenced a two-tiered workforce in which, he said, hundreds of thousands found themselves “marooned” in precariously insecure, low-paying jobs and often zero hours contracts.

On the budget, Mr O’Connor said his union expects the reversal of whathad been the most “egregious cuts”.

“In particular, we expect measures to compensate insured workers who have been contributing PRSI all their working lives, for the abolition of the transitional pension in circumstances where they have been denied an extension of their contracts from the age of 65 to 66.”

He said Siptu had developed an alternative to USC that would retain the capacity to raise revenue from those on high incomes.

“Our formula would retain all the progressive features of the USC in terms of its capacity to raise revenue from those on high incomes

.”