Water will see FG washed up and shipwrecked

In defending water charges, a Fine Gael politician in Kilkenny declared last month: Water cannot be free.

His quote was from Coleridge’s The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. If the erudite politician had read a bit further, five verses on to be exact, he’d have learned the Mariner ended up with an albatross wrapped around his neck, a predicament Fine Gael and Labour could find themselves in at the next election.

I can already see the billboards in the run-up to the poll — proclamations in block capitals about the big wages in Irish Water, the gold-plated bonuses, the company’s achievement in bringing arrogance to a dubious art form in its failure to communicate clearly with the public.