Water charges report - We will pay up one way or another

AS Sir Humphrey Appleby understood, every political crisis, every scandal, no matter how noxious, offers opportunity if appreciated in the correct perspective. 

He would have seen and exploited the opportunities offered by one health scandal after another to soak up public curiosity and anger. Had those systematic failures not sufficed he would have w allowed in the potential to defer, deflect or distract offered by the scandals undermining our police force.

Sir Humphrey was not unique and the lessons he offered in this area have been well learnt. Some senior politicians, especially those in Government, have done something pretty similar around water charges. Had the issue been subject to the cold, unemotional, objective assessment water security demands then it is impossible to believe that the patched-up, dishonest dodge dressed up as a workable compromise being offered by the committee on funding of water services would have materialised.

The level of farce reached on this single issue is unsurpassed in recent public life. The shameless opportunism of those who insist that they have the national interest at heart has been, and is, Olympian. It is also utterly dispiriting. A pathetically inconsistent Fianna Fáíl must bear the brunt of that accusation but their supply-and-demand partners Fine Gael stand accused of something close enough to cowardice. They have shown, again, that they are far more interested in the trappings of power rather than the responsibility to lead, to take hard, possibly unpopular, decisions that it confers.

It must be acknowledged that politicians’ gravity-defying gyrations are a response to a public anger concentrated on water charges even if that anger is a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back reaction to the wider ravages of economic implosion. It must be acknowledged that the issue has been exploited relentlessly by those on the extreme left who would use any opportunity, any issue to undermine what passes for establishment politics. It must be acknowledged too that opportunities to advance the issue were botched. This applies especially to the Taoiseach’s curt dismissal of a referendum to secure Irish Water in public ownership and Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s intervention promising that those who refused to pay would not have their supply curtailed.

In immediate terms this farce shows that the 32nd Dáil is so divided that it is hardly fit for purpose and that an election seems likely sooner rather than later. Water charges will feature in that campaign and a party that has the courage to insist that water must be paid for through a water charge would benefit from that rejection of the it’s-free, we’ve- already-paid-for-it delusions now surrounding the issue.

After nearly seven years of dishonest grandstanding we are no closer to securing water supplies or protecting our limited and damaged water resources. We have shown that this society is too easily manipulated and is still happy to cut off its nose despite its face. We have seen that politicians’ commitment to principle is unreliable. Only the naive imagine this is the end of the matter and that we will not have to, sooner or later, revisit the issue and, eventually, pay water charges.