Irish Water debacle - Abandoning mandate is real failure

Even if the suggestion that Chancellor Angela Merkel drew a line in the sand more than a good country mile short of the kind of concessions Prime Minister David Cameron imagined might be made to prevent Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union has been reinterpreted to soften that inevitable reality check from Berlin, there is a simple lesson for our Government in its difficulties over Irish Water in that weekend spat.

Ms Merkel is not for appeasing extremes, rather she is determined that the middle will hold and the overarching objectives of the EU— stability, peace, prosperity, commonality and tolerance — shall prevail. She will not, rightly, facilitate Mr Cameron by making concessions that might help him outflank right-wing usurpers UKIP to protect Conservatives’ seats in the Commons. Rather she will defend the opportunities for all EU citizens inherent in the community’s freedom-of-movement, freedom-to-work cornerstone. The vast majority of EU citizens would wholeheartedly support her position.

Applying the same principle Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s Government should, as it prepares to launch Irish Water II, remember that the case for water charges is as solid as ever, that the need to repair water infrastructure grows by the day and that the principle that the user pays is fair and appropriate. The urgency around water conservation is so pressing it hardly needs to be argued.