Victoria White has no right to sneer at water charge protesters

I was astonished by the intemperate and unfair nature of your columnist’s Victoria White’s piece on November 6 (‘Anti-water campaigners protest too much’).

I was on the Cork march. The people I met came from every background and every part of the political spectrum. They had a wide range of motives for being there as well. Many were people who had never marched for any reason before. It is insulting and patronising to view them all as tools of some unnameable dark forces.

Could it just be that there is a simpler explanation for the fact that well over 100,000 people turned out? The setting up of Irish Water, with its bloated bonus structure, excessive staffing levels, dreadful communications policy, unaccountability and huge costs, has been an unmitigated disaster. A fraction of the metering infrastructure is in place and we don’t even have the most basic information about costs. I am not prepared to divulge my PPSN to a company whose future is unclear, nor do I see why it is necessary. Nothing has been done about areas where the water has been undrinkable for years.