Water charges - Like it or not, we will all have to pay

IT seems that the Government has finally accepted that if the water charge regime is to succeed and sustain its legitimacy, then they must establish a mechanism to collect the charge from those who can pay but refuse to.

Echoing remarks made by his cabinet colleague Environment Minister Alan Kelly, Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin said yesterday that people could not be allowed to refuse to pay if they were in a position to do so. “There can’t be a position where any of us decide not to pay our bills,” he said.

It may be significant, too, that the first two ministers to acknowledge this inevitability are Labour deputies.

Though this stiffening of the backbone will lead to even more politically motivated hysteria — and delusion — the Government are entirely right to make such provisions.

The great majority of people, an estimated 1.3m, have registered with Irish Water and no matter how strongly those who marched in Dublin last Saturday — anything from 30,000 to 75,000 depending on which estimate you rely on — believe in their cause, the huge contrast in those two figures shows where the democratic legitimacy lies. To pretend otherwise adds just dishonesty to delusion.

Not to establish an unavoidable collection mechanism would be an unacceptable betrayal of the great majority of people who, however reluctantly, have accepted that our water services are on the verge of collapse and need significant investment to meet the growing needs of this society.

Hopefully this mechanism, however it is designed, will avert the terrible prospect of those who have agreed to pay watching powerlessly as neighbours who refused to pay the charge enjoy the exact same water services as they do — but without paying anything towards what has become a terribly expensive service. This situation would be terribly divisive and dangerous and could not be allowed prevail.

The Government was faced with the possibility too, that if a significant number of people who could afford to pay the charge refused to, the courts would quickly become swamped with a tsunami of cases possibly continuing the bizarre and very expensive practice of jailing people for not paying fines or minor taxes.

This is a shabby, failed practice that continually undermines our justice system. If this level-the-field proposal, whenever it is finalised, helps to bring that bizarre and terribly wasteful practice to an end then all the better.

Instead, Irish Water may seek an attachment of earnings and then water charge refuseniks — a vocal minority but a relatively small minority nonetheless — will see their water charge taken from their income, such as wages, pensions or welfare payments.

Those who oppose water charges should not underestimate the support a pay-your-share measure like this will attract.

However, water charge opponents have one trump card left. The Government’s refusal to copper-fasten Irish Water in public ownership through legislation is neither prudent nor rational and must give rise to the gravest suspicions.

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