Politicians quick to dilute their principles on Irish Water

If you were to believe the body politic, Irish Water is the most evil thing since Hitler and the SS. All the parties, especially Fianna Fáil, which introduced water charges in 2010, have sold out their principles for populism, writes Special Correspondent Michael Clifford

Charlie Flanagan compared the discussions on water between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to the peace process.

Earlier in the week, Ruth Coppinger compared the “struggle” against charges to the struggles against slavery and for women’s emancipation. This is what politics in this country has been reduced to at a time of living dangerously.

If our old friend the space cadet was to visit today, he might suggest that the elevation of water charges above pressing human and national matters is symptomatic of a body politic — and even a country — going through post-traumatic stress disorder.

At least, that’s what one can only hope, because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. Just look at some of the positions that have been adopted on water charges and Irish Water, an entity which is apparently the most evil thing to visit the planet since Hitler’s SS.

The group that can claim most credit for what now looks like the abolition of water charges is the Anti Austerity Alliance (AAA). This grouping used to be the Socialist Party, but engaged in the kind of rebranding exercise that Irish Water itself is now destined for.

From its days as the Socialist Party, the comrades were plugged into the success that its brethren in the UK had in pulling the thread that led to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. The poll tax in the UK was a household charge installed in not just a cack-handed but a highly political manner. The opposition came from the streets, and the tax was eventually shelved.

Socialists in the UK have been dining out on that episode for the last 28 years.

Here, the AAA got lucky third time round. Campaigns against the bin charges and the property tax didn’t really get off the ground. Then along came Phil Hogan, togged out in Thatcher drag, and the jackpot beckoned.

On Tuesday, the newly elected AAA deputy Mick Barry told the Dáil: “In France they say what parliament does, the street can undo. This refers to the power of the working class and the broad mass of people to make and break governments and to make and break unpopular and wrong decisions. That tradition is now taking root in this Republic.”

Maybe, but the victory will definitely sustain long nights of political discussion in AAA forums into the future. In years to come they will still be reaching back into the past to recall the great victory of freeing the people from the bondage of conserving water.

Mick Barry apparently believes the billions required to deliver a first-world water infrastructure could be accessed by going through the names in the Sunday Times Rich List and getting those folk to cough up.

Sinn Féin were slow out of the blocks. They only copped that hay could be made on water when the AAA’s Paul Murphy — aka Malcolm X in this struggle — came from nowhere to snatch a by-election in 2014.

Suddenly, the Shinners located their inner victim and water was cast as a human right which should not attract any charge. Housing is also a human right, but most people pay something for it, including the vast majority of those in public housing.

So far, nobody has reported every other country in the OECD to the International Criminal Court for abusing human rights by charging for a finite resource, but give it time. The Shinners’ solution for Irish Water is abolish it first, ask questions later through a commission which would decide whether it should have been abolished at all.

At its ard fheis last week, Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald pointed out that Fianna Fáil had robbed her party’s policy on water. She was right there.

Water has restored the Soldiers of Destiny to their rightful position as the embodiment of the spirit of the nation. It introduced water charges in 2010 in its plan to save the country from the mess it had made. Fianna Fáil stood by the principle of charging for water.

Last year, the party realised the principle to which it was wedded was not popular so Micheál Martin announ-ced it was to be changed. If people don’t like your principles, you just change them.

Fianna Fáil has returned to its real guiding principle of populism. “We have always acted in the national interest,” TD Niall Collins said on radio yesterday. Of course he is correct on the basis that a true Fianna Fáiler genuinely believes that if it’s in the party’s interest, it is automatically in the national interest.

Fine Gael’s position on water has been incompetence wrapped in arrogance.

The party never recovered from Hogan’s handling of the matter, best typified by his statement in May 2014 that water pressure would be turned down to a “trickle” if bills weren’t paid.

Issuing such a threat at a time when huge tracts of the country were just about keeping body and soul together was effectively inviting a traumatised nation to revolt.

Then we have the Labour Party. It has been drowned out by water. Once upon a time, when Eamon Gilmore gave great anger in opposition, the party was opposed to charges. On Tuesday, poor Alan Kelly paused on the road to Damascus to issue a state of the water address.

Referring to the deal hatched between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, he said: “I believe we are about to witness the triumph of mediocrity over modernism, of short-termism over common sense, and immaturity over innovation…

“Fianna Fail had the chance to make a stand on mental health services, on renewal of rural Ireland, to end child poverty, or to institute a living wage, yet they have made a stand on an issue that costs people €3 a week. Priorities?”

So it goes in politics as practised in this country. One can only hope that the insane elevation of water charges is down to the post-traumatic stress disorder engendered by eight years of savage austerity and human upheaval.

If this is the only real fall-out from the bad years, then the result mightn’t be so disastrous.

The real cost will only accrue in years to come when the water infrastructure will either be properly upgraded or will herald some serious trauma in deficient delivery of clean water or waste water treatment.

Let’s just hope we don’t look back on these days and wonder how things had ever got this crazy.