Water issue is a symptom of reform needed in wider body politic

AS NIGHT was closing in on the RDS last Saturday, with the ballot papers beginning to curl towards dog-eared, a Labour party canvasser sat down for a cup of coffee, writes Michael Clifford.

He was philosophical about the shock that had been delivered his party. Reflecting on the campaign, he felt one doorstep encounter summed much of it up.

A middle-aged woman opened the door and listened patiently to the candidate’s pitch. “She just kept her head down, listening and then she looked up and said, ‘we’d just like things to be the way they were’,“ the canvasser relayed.

“That summed it up for me. People have gone through a trauma and they don’t know where to turn now. Everything is insecure.”

That voter was not alone in wishing to have the clock turned back. It’s a feeling that can be grasped right across society. Up until the economic crash it looked as if the trajectory of enhanced prosperity down through the generations was still on course. In this country, prosperity had come dropping slowly, but it had arrived.

Then, all changed, and now there still persists in some quarters a feeling that we can still go back to the future.

One small example of that sentiment was available in some of the final lobbying ahead of the general election.

Forty-eight hours before polling, the Garda Representative Association issued a release “calling on the new government to fully reinstate the terms and conditions of rank and file Garda Síochána to pre-2008 levels.” The release also touched on two of the major issues in the recession, the depletion of public services and the inequitable manner in which young people and new recruits have borne the brunt of cutbacks. But apart from that, the message was that everything should be put back together as it had been.

The GRA was merely echoing a feeling in large parts of society that the past can be revisited. That myopic view chooses to ignore how unsustainable things were. Life was being lived on the never, never. Sure, there was a hierarchy of blame, at the top of which sat bankers, developers and compliant politicians. But the wealth that trickled down into wage increases, tax cuts and enhanced services was illusory, not real.

Many in the main political parties must also be harking for the past following the result of the general election. The political system now looks to be on the cusp of a new era, particularly if there is not going to be a grand coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Heretofore, the system was straightforward and comfortable. Government parties ruled the Dáil. The opposition was tolerated, but never allowed proper opportunity to engage in advancing legislation, or even scrutinising the executive.

The opposition, for its part, reverted to a position of opposition for opposition sake. And the only real loser was the country, which was poorly served by all in parliament.

That will have to change if the system moves to install a minority government. It’s a scenario that will take all political entities out of their comfort zone and present huge challenges.

One issue that defined the way politics was done in this country was that of Irish Water and the accompanying charges.

The coalition attempted to ram through the new regime with a minimum of fuss or consultation. Irish Water was set up without any consideration that it might be perceived as a vehicle to eventually privatise the resource. Legislation was rushed through the Dáil. News tumbled out that not only would householders be subjected to another new charge, but it would be administered by a gold-plated quango.

For the radical left, this presented an opportunity to go back to the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s regime was holed below the waterline over the issue of the poll tax.

Here was a chance for a repeat this side of the Irish Sea. Sinn Féin saw the Anti- Austerity Alliance nibbling away on its left flank, so it joined the campaign. Then Fianna Fáil promised to abolish Irish Water and suspend charges on the basis that it might attract transfers down the ballot paper for the last seats in some constituencies.

That was how things were done. Incompetence, shoddy scrutiny and disregard for consequences on the government side, every opportunity to make hay taken among opposition parties, and the health of the nation mortgaged for political expediency.

Notably, the AAA and People Before Profit appear to have zero interest in how to fund upgrading the decrepit water infrastructure. The charges are merely a political tool: Irish Water as an effigy of Thatcher.

The only solution according to Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin is to go back to the future, by returning responsibility for water to the local authorities and reverting to central funding for resources.

If this is their vision of the future in a new political era, we’re in bigger trouble than we imagined. Practically every other country in the OECD recognises the importance of a separate national or regional authority, with access to its own funding to manage supply and infrastructure. Here we prefer to ignore inconvenient truths.

A new way of doing things might be to suspend charges for a relatively short period to poverty-proof the system and review the structure of Irish Water. Throw in a constitutional referendum to copper- fasten water as a public resource, and with it some hope that the political system is finally coming around to accept change.

Don’t bet on it. The electorate might have signalled that major change is desirable, but the familiar is still comforting for many elements of the new Dáil.

What will be interesting is how Fianna Fáil with its newly enhanced complement of TDs enters this new era. For so long the standard-bearer of the old way of doing things, the party now has the opportunity to lead from the front. How exactly it gets itself off the hook it is caught on over water will tell plenty about what we can expect.

Ideally, of course, we should be able to go right back to the past, to that different country of illusion and plenty. Back then we told ourselves that the good times would never end; that we were entitled to low taxes and enhanced services on the back of a construction bubble.

There was no problem with water then either. It leaked through rusting subterranean pipes, out of sight and out of mind, but arrived in our homes free and bountiful.

Now the future has arrived. There is no going back with the economy. In politics, and in how we deal with water, there remains a choice, albeit a dubious one.

Will the body politic attempt to genuinely reform how it does business? Is the country going to face up to the reality that the old ways of managing water simply won’t work? Hold on tight.

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