Water, Water Everywhere. Water Charges Anyway. April 21, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in Ireland.trackback
The Irish Times two days ago reported that the Dublin government was two weeks away from introducing proposals to institute the double tax of domestic water charges via water meters installed in every home in the state. In an attempt to cover up one of the most unjust and regressive forms of possible taxation, John Gormley, Green Party Minister for the Environment was wheeled out to put an environmental spin on things.
“I think everybody who understands the environment … they know that this is an absolute necessity,” he said. “You just can’t go putting your head in the sand on these issues any longer. Water is a precious resource.
“All the evidence shows that when you actually charge for water people conserve it, people use it wisely.”
Unlike public money of course, which rather than being carefully preserved, should be poured down the drains built by greedy bankers and reckless property speculators. Not even the coalition is stupid enough to think that they can get away with this without fatally damaging whatever slim hopes they have of recovery in time for the next election, and so the charges are being suspended until after June 2012. Trying to con the public regarding water charges in the political interests of the administration is of course familiar to people in Northern Ireland, where the restoration of devolution under the combined leadersip of the DUP and PSF was considerably sweetened by the suspension of water charges. As with the south, however, it is only a matter of time before they are introduced. Neither of the big two parties in NI is opposed to water charges on principle – the shift to discussions about how best to soften the blow for working people etc demonstates that – and I expect that, probably shortly after the next Assembly elections when it won’t affect their vote, that they will introduce them and blame them on cutbacks dictated by whatever government is in London at the time, albeit in the face of bitter opposition. Public opposition was a major reason for their suspenions, but as we have seen in the last week, when it comes to elections in NI, social and economic issues are quickly forgotten once the cry against themmuns is raised, and I think that as soon as they feel they can get away with it without serious electoral risk, the NI Executive will introduce these charges, relying on the electorate’s short memory and sectarian impulses.
However, as noted by Look Left, in the south mobilisation for a broad-based campaign against water charges led by the left has begun. There is perhaps greater potential for success in the south, and let’s hope that this issue can become one around which all the anger over NAMA, the mishandling of the economy, the broken promises, and all the other failings of the current government can crystallise. It certainly has potential.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Can I just say that I think water charges in and of themselves are a very good idea but in the context of some striking disparities in wealth it can become grossly unfair.
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Is that lookleft the Workers party site or a closely affiliated site. .
first impressions is its a very nice site – good design and lots of content thats easy to access. very nice indeed
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Looking on the “About” page it says:
“As an independent media outlet, supported by the Workers’ Party, Look Left intends to play its part countering these problems by providing a non-sectarian platform for progressive news, views and debate from working class communities as well as from a wide range of left-wing activists.”
http://www.lookleftonline.org/about/
So there you go. Nice site too.
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Scott,
South Carolina Green Party! You’re a long way from home here, or is the US Green Party a home for Left-leaning radicals?
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The GPUS can be a home for left leaning radicals or a bunch of hippie Democrats, depends on where you are really. It tends to be a catchall party and where I am, its the only game in town. We’re a ways from Congress at least, so there’s no immediate danger of selling out completely.
I like reading this and a few other Irish political blogs for the highly informative discussion. The historical underpinnings of the politics seem is well woven into the analysis. Not surprising really, since all the players have to be contextualized not just as Left/Right, but Republican/non-R and sometimes by religious affiliation, etc. Its an education.
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You have to love the Greens. I wonder do they sit around at emergency meetings to decide how to win back all the votes they’ve lost due acting as FF’s fig leaf. Then, one clicks their fingers and say “I know – let’s charge everyone for water!” and is then carried shoulder high from the room.
Are they just on a kamikaze mission?
P.
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Hi Paul,
I sure hope so, this country has gone so extremely right-wing especially with Gombeen Gormley and his carpet-baggers floating their ball-cocks in our waters. The stench off their policies is more polluting than any volcano dust could have from Iceland, maybe his next move might be to tax the Icelandic people for ice !!. I believe it past time we took our country back from these henchmen that has sold our souls to the most lucrative pension plan that they can muster for themselves.
We were sold out with Nice, we were sold out with Lisbon and now were sold a pup from Europe that has us reaching for the blank check again.
Once they are allowed to install the principle of a charge for water it will only be a matter of a few short years before we will be taxed for the clouds that pass overhead.
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First and foremost,water is not a scarse resource in Ireland.Water management has scarse resources, just like our schools and hospitals etc.This is one big Green Tax.I love the bit where Gormless worked out that if you charge for it people use less ,Priceless.The leaky pipes is a maintenance issue same as the roads etc.
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wait a sec .. aren’t “green taxes” good? when you phrase it that way, I like it!
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The difference between schools and water is that you want to public use the former more and the latter less. Hence the charges.
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Actually Andrew, the main difference is that the fucking idiots in the Green Party are stupid enough to act as frontmen for a regressive, anti-working class, tax on water while even they have just about enough sense not to bring one in on schooling.
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Do you think? all that paper ,water, electricity ,road usage. They might even reason that it would be popular with the youth.
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The sheer hard neck of Gormley in going ahead with water charges before stopping fluoridation! We’ll pay extra for the poisoned water, and pay with our health too. Compare:
http://greenparty.ie/en/news/latest_news/greens_in_govt_would_stop_water_fluoridation
Not only that, Gormley & co last year inserted blatant lies about fluoridation in their health policy and deleted their long-standing call for an immediate end to fluoridation — just to keep Cowen and Martin happy.
There’s no clearer example of how Gormley doesn’t give a flying fig about his party or the people of Ireland.
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Just because a tax is measured on something other than income does not automatically make it ‘regressive’. Its not an unreasonable idea to suggest that there can be a tax other than on income, and its certainly not unreasonable when that tax is for a specific reason – to reduce consumption of a resource.
How are the Green Party acting a ‘frontmen’ when it was their idea and its something they have always supported?
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My concern with that kind of a tax, especially for an essential like water (or hospital charges or prescription charges) is that it serves no meaningful disincentive to wealthy people to reduce their use of the scarce resource while it can make it harder for those already struggling to make ends meet to make those ends meet.
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What would you suggest as an alternative?
A few things.
1. I don’t think for a moment that this will prove a popular policy, but that’s hardly a measure of whether something should go ahead or not.
2. Water is not, as one person pointed out, a scarce resource. Drinking water, however, is. It doesn’t – as many will suggest – fall from the sky, or surround the island: it’s a product, which is treated and produced at great cost. Much in the same way as electricity, that cost is best covered in two ways: (1) as a public utility, partially funded through progressive income tax and (2) by the people who use the resource, on a proportional basis.
3. This isn’t double taxation, no more than charging per unit of electricity is, or phone minute billed. It’s a charge for using a resource. After a certain minimum quota, the more you use, the more you cost, and thus the more you pay. The ESB, Bord Gáis, Telecom Eireann (formerly), Bord na Móna are all examples of state-owned bodies providing essential services which were paid for mostly by the people who use the resources in a proportional manner. Can someone tell me (please, please, please) why if water shouldn’t be charged on consumption, electricity or food should be?
4. Plenty of people use no mains drinking water, or take steps to reduce their use of it. Such people should be rewarded, and should receive a reduction in cost for their activities. Such a reduction is not possible through general taxation. Of course there’s always going to be a situation where you pay for something you don’t use as a part of general taxation (and thus a large part of water infrastructure and provision will always be paid for through general taxation), but there should still be some incentivisation and legitimate reward in a system like this.
5. Opposition to past water charges is understandable, since they could reasonably be regarded as double-taxation, having no purpose other than revenue raising. That’s not the case with this, where revenue-raising (while obviously part of it) is second in purpose to the goal of incentivising people to stop wasting water and overconsuming. It’s something we can’t afford, and people’s apathy towards water overuse was evident when people started running taps during the cold snap. Do you think that people would do that with even a nominal charge per 1,000 litres? I doubt it. How much of the immediate opposition to water charges is borne out of a sort of nostalgic response to one of the few campaigns the left in Ireland has one without entering institutions? How much opposition for this comes from the appeal of a genuine grassroots campaign?
Sorry for going on so much, but this issue simply isn’t going away until someone can come up with a way to stop people from wasting water. If there’s a way in which that can be done without a charge, I’m all ears. If you can’t answer that, then this issue isn’t going away.
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My thought is so what if it is expensive to produce, not double taxation or any of the points you made. It should be part of that core package, like health care, like schooling (also not cheap to provide) that is provided to all without charge. It’s like what Hugh Green had to say about health care.
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Andrew, can water be treated as just another commodity? It’s not as if people will have a choice on whether or not to purchase it. Clearly we’re heading towards privatisation of water provision with this as the first step on that path.
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Actually, Andrew, a regressive tax is a tax which tends to shift the burden of taxation onto those with lower incomes. That’s what flat rate taxes do, as do per-use taxes. A water tax based on anything other than income is by definition a regressive tax.
This tax will have the effect of putting a greater portion of the overall tax burden onto the lower paid as compared to the status quo. And the status quo in Ireland is already very bad on that score, with income tax (and corporation tax and other taxes on business) set at an abberantly low level and a strong reliance on regressive taxes.
As for this all being the Greens big idea, the collossal stupidity of the remaining Green Party supporters never ceases to dazzle me. Water taxes have been around in this country since before the Greens were a twinkle in a befuddled hippy’s eye. Just as the bin tax was brought in as a straightforward way of increasing the tax burden on the lower paid and as a step towards privatisation of a public service, so too is this tax being brought in for the same reason – raise cash, raise it off the backs of the “right” people and set the privatisation ball rolling. There’s also the advantage of a massive subsidy to the construction industry when it comes to putting in the meters.
Fianna Fail don’t give a festering donkey dick for the environment. They are the developers party. The Greens are just about stupid enough to provide faux-environmentalist cover for a nasty, right wing, measure. Just as they did when the bin tax was introduced.
Pity that they don’t show the same environmentalist drive when it comes to things like building great big motorways through national heritage sites or Rossport. Still, never mind lads. I hear they made one of your TDs Junior Minister for Bicycles and another one Junior Minister for Gardening. I honestly don’t know how FFers keep straight faces when dealing with you. I’m honestly surprised that they haven’t put conical hats on your parliamentary party and told them it’s the new governmental dress code.
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I’m fully aware of what the traditional concept of regressive/progressive tax is. And while I fully support progressive taxation for the vast majority of state income I think there is a role for ‘environmentally progressive’ in the overall tax scheme.
I think its a dated concept to just look at the taxation system as means of state financing and income redistribution. Its also shown itself to be highly effective in adjusting people’s behaviour.
I suppose that is what makes me a Green and not a socialist. I don’t just dismiss something that falls outside of standard left wing orthodoxy.
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No, what makes you a Green at this point in time is that you are a credulous fucking moron.
One last time: This is not an “environmental” tax any more than Tara is an “environmental” motorway, Rossport an “environmental” gas extraction operation or Ringsend an “environmental” incinerator. It’s just another right wing policy by the most right wing government we’ve had since the 1920s. And yet again the dribbling halfwits of the Greens are out fronting it.
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Could somebody please explain to me how drinking water needs to be treated and produced at great cost.And it does fall from the sky.Comparing the production of electricity with the production of water is crazy same with the production of food.Water is not scarce in Ireland.
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Once again, water is not scarce in Ireland. It’s nationally misdistributed, not generally okay to drink in normal quantities, and isn’t pumped into your home.
Nationally redistributing the water (it doesn’t tend to rain more in population centres), treating it so that it’s okay to drink (look what happened in Galway when the filtration process was outdated and wonky), and pumping it to homes costs quite a bit of money. Money is scarce, therefore drinking water is scarce.
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Sorry, in case it wasn’t clear, my main point is that there’s a significant difference between water and drinking water.
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Sure Tombukto, it’d be great if it could be part of the package. The problem is that there isn’t a problem with over-consumption of healthcare or education. There is with water.
Food, too, should surely be in the same category, but it’s generally understood that people waste food and overconsume to a greater extent when they don’t have to pay per unit consumed (look, for example, at how much people put on their plates or eat at an all you can eat compared to another place). That principle applies to food, and surely should apply to water too.
Again, it’d be great if water could just be provided free, but nobody has come up with a credible solution to stop people from wasting and overconsuming it.
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Surely there is in one sense an overconsumption of healthcare?
Anyhow, a couple of thoughts. I know there’s the incentivisation issue, but that seems to me to one that hits hardest at those with least ability to pay. How are the measures meant to deal with that? After all, one can, as I was told this very week by a GP member, see a point in dissuading someone from washing the car, but that person is probably more likely to be able to soak up, as it were, the costs of water charges than someone on a lower income without a car, or with a large family or who knows what? So I’m unconvinced by the incentivisation approach, at least until we get some detail on how it will deal equally with those with lesser or greater amounts of disposable income.
What precisely is the problem with using general taxation to deal with this? Where exactly are the studies which demonstrate that it’s overconsumed or wasted? What are the precise costs of this supposed overconsumption? How do minimum quotas work? Is it per number in a household, or what? I note that the Minister couldn’t indicate how much it would cost, suggesting that €400 was wide of the mark. €350? €200?
If we’re talking these sorts of figures clearly those on lower incomes are going to find them much harder to sustain than those on higher incomes.
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WbS I completely agree with you. In Ireland, where is the argument that poor overuse water? Unless you’re suggesting they don’t wash …
In Ireland, unlike South Africa, people do not have swimming pools nor do they water their gardens. In South Africa, many people do both; and they have water charges, which are not steep in any case.
Ireland has no reason for this double-taxation. Water usage for private individuals does not vary significantly enough to warrant this.
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Right so its not scarce or an enviromental/green issue its the collection and distribution thats the problem .If wastage is an issue I’d bet bad infrastructure and poor maintenance is the primary cause.It seems to me that the service is being run into the ground so that the privatisation cavalry can come to our rescue and skin all us poor indians.Meanwhile the Greens are softening us up by telling us its an enviromental issue, a scarce finite resource (akin to selling us whiskey)
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Sure water is best paid from general taxation. But….
The left really needs to come to terms with resource scarcity. Potable water doesn’t just fall out of the sky for use in cities and towns, it needs to be processed, stored and pumped. That all means energy, and large amounts of it.
Water is scarce on a global scale and we consume wasteful amounts of it. The figures for the UK (and ours could well be worse, given the rate of leakage) is 150 litres per person per day of treated water. Our total consumption if we include the water embedded in the food and goods we import has been estimated at 3400 litres per day. Just as we externalise the pollution costs of our consumer goods to China, we externalise the water scarcity to them and other primary producers.
Water scarcity is going to be as big as fossil fuel scarcity in our futures. It’s not just the global South that is short, but large parts of Europe.
So I’m very unsatisfied with ‘No water charges’ as a blanket slogan. It paints the left as blind to issues of resource conservation and competitiveness through better usage of resources. We need come up with a better scheme that is progressive both in terms of taxation and resource preservation.
I can think of a couple of ways but they are both dependent on universal metering.
Here’s one possible way – a ‘Cap and Share’ scheme similar to the one Feasta was proposing for carbon consumption. Every person is entitled to a free, paid for by general taxation, water ration of, say, 100 litres a day. That’s enough for cooking, drinking, a short shower and a few flushes of a frugal toilet and some left over. At the end of the year the unused part of the ration can be sold back to the public water supplier who would sell it on to big and wasteful users who have exceeded their quotas. This provides a social income for those who tend to use less who might well be those on lower incomes.
The other end of the equation is tackling the big users. In our case this is agriculture. Again the left is guilty of ignoring an important part of the economy – what goes on down the country.
An example: The big thing in rural areas in the last couple of years has been the building of slatted cattle sheds for fattening during winter. They’ve been popping up like bungalows. Non-grass-fed cattle consume huge amounts of water and not one of these sheds to my knowledge was fitted with a system to collect water of their roofs. Again positive proposals for efficiency incentives in the agricultural sector would sustain the opposition to water charges far better than a purely reactive campaign.
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Pope, your point about agricultural use of water misses the point I think. The water used in agriculture doesn’t come from the public treated water distribution system, it is groundwater from a well on the farm itself, and is untreated. The water is used for a variety of purposes on the farm and the bulk of it returns locally into to the ground from whence it came, it’s a closed system.
Again the point about drinking water (and health care) is that the commodification of basic human rights has to be resisted at every opportunity.
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Yes, there are imaginative ways to save and preserve water, and preservation will have be addressed. But the blunt instrument of water charges will not achieve the noble objectives you set out above.
One aspect of current water usage is the fact that all household water used in domestic settings is potable water. We flush out toilets with drinking water. As I have heard it said previously, during the construction ‘boom’ there was ample scope for the installation of plumbing systems which could divert grey water to toilets, heating, car washing, gardening etc and have a separate system for drinking and maybe an intermediate category for washing. It can’t beyond the scope of engineering possibility to devise such a system. A fraction of the half billion to be spent on installing meters could probably fund a research project in one of the universities/ITs that could come up with such a system. Why not try innovation in waste water innovation, and retrofit houses with whatever new system is devised. That would boost innovation and the construction industry simultaneously.
Water charges are, in my view, a punitive measure and indulge the deepest intuitutions of the Irish elite that ordinary Irish citizens not only will, but must, bear the brunt of each crisis. Water is a clear example where much vaunted “thinking outside the box” could be applied, but no, the gombeen men have to have their way an get the ‘lower orders’ to pay, again! I’m sure a low paid public servant with a variable rate mortgage living on an unfinished ghost estate in the midlands will really be looking forward to at 700 euro water bill, thanks a bunch, John!
Finally, on the Green Party – water charges are merely them dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of their electoral suicide note.
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Nobody on the left has a problem with the efficient use and preservation of resources. After all, the wastefulness of capitalism is one of the basic critiques Marx makes of capitalism.
Nevertheless, we do have a problem being told, as we have been here, that water charges are a double taxation except when the Greens introduce them, at which point they magically stop being so. That is simply an insult to people’s intelligence.
Arguments about scarcity of resources are even harder to take when a fraction of the money invested in – to pick a random example – NAMA could quite easily have paid for the upgrading of the pipes etc.
As for arguments about food, electricity etc. If we were already paying for food through taxation, and the government starting charging extra, of course people would complain. But we aren’t. And so that is a total red herring, designed, to mix a metaphor and a bad pun simultaneously, to muddy the waters of this discussion.
As for the argument that we should reward people who don’t use mains drinking water. What that is effectively saying is that families that can afford to drink only bottled water should be rewarded for being able to afford to do so, and at the expense of those who can’t. If ever there was an example of how simple-minded environmentalism ignores the realities of economic and social power, this is it.
Pope Epopt raises a good point about industry and the use of resources. I wonder why this government might be choosing to go after domestic users rather than business ones. Let me think about that.
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Business users to pay water charges if I remember the 2007 Galway crisis correctly – local business were quick to demand a refund for any contaminated water that they used.
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I wonder how the people of Galway – people in a modern European country who’ve had to put up with their water contaminated long-term by human excrement – will react to water charges. I suppose putting another tax in the plebs is easier than trying to take on the gombeens.
P.
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@Garibaldy – I hadn’t thought of bottled water – of course they’ll buy their way out of scarcity as they always do.
@LeftTheCross
No, I’m afraid I can personally vouch for the fact that a lot of water for agriculture comes from treated rural water schemes. Farmers tap into these and put a bathtub in the field and a pipe into the shed. A lot of groundwater aquifers have become polluted by slurry and non-functional septic tanks in this ‘closed system’ and have become unusable without treatment.
I agree with you whole-heartedly on the commodification of basic human rights to food, shelter, water, clean air etc.
I just have a problem with these purely oppositional campaigns that don’t put forward alternatives. Rather than any fancy rationing scheme like my own not-wholly-baked one, we could be pushing public investment in water saving infrastructure, on an industrial and personal level. Let’s have a bit of a plan and show we’ve thought about it beyond saying ‘no way’.
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Pope, ok, there will be abuse of a free resource by unscrupulous producers, I can’t agrue against that fact, but it doesn’t dilute the principle that the resource should be free. Legal measures would be a better approach to such abuse. I live in a rural community and there’s no water scheme on my road, my neighbours are farmers, they use wells, that’s the background to my comment. (Thankfully the groundwater is unpolluted as I have a well myself.)
Agreed regarding the need for public investment in water saving infrastructure. But that’s a different animal obviously to the GP announcement of “investment” as part of the rollout of metering, which only serves to facilitate privatisation down the line.
Your point about purely oppositional campaigns that don’t put forward alternatives would be fair if it was the full story. However, to quote the leaflet which was distributed at the protest outside the GP conference in Waterford for example
“That €500m needs to be spent immediately in real water saving infrastructure especially in ending the leaks scandal…Major programmes are now needed to retrofit homes with water saving measures such as duas flush tiolet systems, rain water tanks and the recycling of ‘grey’ water”…
So it’s not all just nay-saying.
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@LeftAtTheCross
Thanks for the info – I didn’t see the leaflet. Fair enough and my comments about a lack of positive proposals were unfair in this case.
But most people don’t see beyond the slogan. Wouldn’t Water Saving not Water Charging be a better one? I know it doesn’t roll of the tongue but it sticks it to the Greens where they richly deserve it. We have to take over the worthwhile parts of their pitch that they have betrayed.
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Pope, from an agitational perspective I think it’s probably better to focus on the tax/charge aspect in the headline, and to then include water saving as a positive detail in the main body of the argument.
Unfortunately we live in depoliticised times, people are more likely to get worked up about issues that hit them in their pockets rather than in their consciences.
Agree fully that the Left should, and not just opportunistically, lay claim to the eco agenda, or at least the worthwhile aspects of it as you say.
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I hope I’m not being too repetitve of what’s already been said, but how does ‘the environment’ even come into it? Water might be scarce globally, but obviously not in Ireland, and making it safe doesn’t burn a lot of coal or gas, so there’s no harm to the atmosphere – or polluting of the soil. If there is ‘waste’, I’d bet most of the problem resides in crappy infrastructure, not in people having longer showers or whatever else is deemed ungreen. By all means collect rain water or whatever, and maybe charge businesses, esp. if they are polluters, but surely water is an absolutely basic human need – and therefore access is a human right. If the debate was taking place in, say, Arizona, where a real crisis looms thanks to watering lawns etc. etc. in a desert, it would maybe make sense, but this just sounds like political bullshit to cover a deeply regressive move. The obvious result would surely be poor people rationing water as they do heat or food when they can’t afford it – an appalling immiseration. Now I’m all angry and deprressed, mutter mutter…
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Ireland consumes an average of 160 liters per capita per day, one of the highest in Europe (where we are the only ones without rates, a coincidence?). As a result by 2015 its predicted Dublin will have to start piping in water from other parts of the country, at a minimal cost of €600m.
Irish Times, October 29th 2008
The idea that ‘wealth progressive’ taxation is the only acceptable taxation for the left, and that ‘consumption progressive’ taxation has no role to play is extremely outdated.
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“Ireland consumes an average of 160 liters per capita per day, one of the highest in Europe (where we are the only ones without rates, a coincidence”
I’ve presume you’re comparing like with like and factored in water losses.
And you say that we’re “one” of the highest, which means that rates don’t stop water overusage.
P.
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There’s no such thing as “consumption progressive” taxation. It is not progressive to tax a large family of poor people more than a small family of rich people because they consume more of a basic necessity (and in this country, an abundant necessity but that’s beside the point). Any tax which shifts the burden of taxation onto the lower paid is, by definition, a regressive tax.
Tell me Andrew, do you think that Fianna Fail, the leading party in government, and the party which holds the vast majority of government seats, is:
A) Introducing a water tax because they have become environmentalists and for some idiotic reason think that a water tax in Ireland would have some environmental benefit. Something which doesn’t exactly fit with their record, if you consider the fate of Rossport, Tara and Ireland’s only glass recycling facility, their love of incinerators and their decades of devotion to insane developer led development.
or
B) Introducing a water tax so as to raise tax receipts, target those tax rises at the lower paid, set up a service for privatisation and give a subsidy to their construction industry friends. All of which fits exactly with their record and past behaviour.
Which of those options seems more likely to you?
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I hate to agree with you, Mark P, but intellectual honesty demands it. I have my cynic hat firmly on when it comes to this one.
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@Mark P – after the free allocation of water a lower income group may pay more as a percentage of their income if they consume a large amount of water. That is a negative aspect, I am not denying that. There are negative aspects to any taxation system, but in this case it is justified. Water is scarce, it needs to be treated, and those who consume excessive amounts will have to pay more. I don’t by into the argument, btw, the wealthy families will waste water just because they have the wealth to do so. Last time I was in the leafy suburbs of South Dublin I did not see wealthy women throwing plastic bags around!
FF probably don’t want water charges, just like they don’t want civil partnerships or a ban on corporate donations or a ban on stag hunting. But there you go, thats coalition.
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Andrew, isn’t that a profoundly negative, not to say explicitly unfair outcome, if those on lower incomes pay more proportionately than those on higher incomes. And it’s difficult for me to see precisely how it is that they are somehow meant to ‘waste’ it more? What particular data is there to support that contention?
I’m also not sure that taxation systems are necessarily unfairer to those on lower incomes, or rather I don’t believe they intrinsically must be.
As it happens I’m all for a rational consideration of resources, much as Pope Epopt suggests above, but the problematical aspects of this seem to be considerable and I’m not hearing much that would convince me that they’re being addressed. That isn’t your fault, by the way, but the detail on this seems scant at best.
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Now I’ve heard it all.
Fianna Fail are being pushed into introducing water charges by the Green Party. The same Greens who have been so markedly successful in “forcing” Fianna Fail to adopt its views on Shannon, Rossport, Tara and incinerators.
Fianna Fail are entirely opposed to raising more money, shifting the tax take onto the less well off, subsidising their friends in the building industry or setting up juicy public services for privatisation. In fact if it wasn’t for the deeply cherished Green Party belief that Ireland’s environment is in serious danger of running out of water, there would be no water tax. This is further evidenced by the fact that no other Fianna Fail government has ever presided over water taxes.
Were they handing out free frontal lobotomies at the last few Green Party conferences?
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“I hope I’m not being too repetitve of what’s already been said, but how does ‘the environment’ even come into it? ”
It comes into it because morally-superior guilt-tripping is the only card the Irish Greens have left.
P.
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Perhaps closing those swimming pools wil be justified as an evironmentally friendly act too. After all, swimming is a privilege that people should pay heavily for.
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@Andrew “after the free allocation of water a lower income group may pay more as a percentage of their income if they consume a large amount of water. That is a negative aspect, I am not denying that. There are negative aspects to any taxation system, but in this case it is justified. Water is scarce, it needs to be treated, and those who consume excessive amounts will have to pay more. I don’t by into the argument, btw, the wealthy families will waste water just because they have the wealth to do so.”
So poor families are likely to consume ‘excessive amounts’ of water and must be financially penalised even if they have a large family and their use is essential, but wealthy families can be ‘trusted’ to conserve water even though they will not suffer a financial loss from wasting it. This to me shows a basic snobbery towards the poor along the lines of ‘well if they must insist on having so very many children the dirty oiks then they’ll have to pay for it’. Would you say the same about access to healthcare or education?
Conversely you seem to think the wealthy are inherently more environmentally conscious which is just bs for anyone who knows anything about income levels, consumption & carbon footprints. It’s not the poor taking 5 mini-breaks a year & popping over to New York to do the Christmas shopping, but hey penalise them for drinking ‘too much’ water. Your faith in the rich also goes against the basic argument that water charges’ main rationale is as a financial disincentive to wastage – they obviously aren’t a disincentive for the wealthy but luckily we apparently have a socially conscious elite. I presume their superior education and intelligence means they understand the importance of this pseudo-environmental measure better than the ignorant poor.
Water charges that penalise the poor but have no impact on the pockets of the rich – similar to the London congestion charge – essentially mean rich people can buy a licence to waste, turning a human right into a luxury item. The cap & trade system mentioned above is equally vile and based on the same flawed neoliberal market mechanisms as the Kyoto carbon trading scam.
A poor person could also sell their second ‘excessive’ kidney to a 90 year old billionaire so why not set up a market in that? After all it’s based on the same logic of the poor scrimping on essential resources so they can sell them to the rich to subsidise their excessive consumption.
Also can someone explain to me scientifically why water shortages in other countries mean we should ‘waste’ less here through domestic use? Or is this another version of the ‘think of all the starving people in Africa & eat your dinner’ argument?
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“…can someone explain to me scientifically why water shortages in other countries mean we should ‘waste’ less here through domestic use?”
There isn’t a direct link, obviously.
There is, however, a direct link between the embedded water in the products we import and drought elsewhere.
Here’s how: River water that could otherwise be used for agriculture in, say, China, is diverted to manufacture goods for export. Parts of China are experiencing severe drought. Therefore embedded water in our ,say, DVD players (electronics consumes huge amounts of water in the production process) contributes to drought elsewhere.
And there’s another wrinkle – the Chinese government have decided that they can’t feed themselves securely, so they buy up large tracts of land in Africa and pump from the local aquifiers to grow rice for Chinese consumption. Result: less water for consumption and subsistence agriculture and Africans starve or move off their former land.
You can’t have your unlimited material growth (under any political economy, but especially under Capitalism) without the poor suffering. This is the bit of the green message we have to grasp and not leave it to neo-liberal greens.
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Pope, not sure the Greens see it that way though, their emphasis would be more that “you can’t have unlimited material growth without the environment suffering”.
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@peter
“I hope I’m not being too repetitive of what’s already been said, but how does ‘the environment’ even come into it? ”
Processing and pumping water requires energy. I hope I’m not being repetitive :-)It requires a continuous input of energy to purify and pump it. There’s a lot of embedded energy in the water infrastructure (think about how much energy goes into making and laying a pipe system) and there will be more if we improve that infrastructure, as we should. It’s fairly small compared with the energy we expend on transport and heating our pathetically poorly insulated houses and work-places, but still significant.
The only figures I can find after a quick Google are for California are 360kg CO2 equivalent per person per anum emissions due to water consumption with 19% of the state’s energy supply going into water production. Environment Science and Technology: Energy and Air Emission Effects of Water SupplyLet’s hope it’s less here (bound to be – we don’t do de-salination), but I wouldn’t guarantee it, given the way we do public infrastructure!
A socialist society must be a smart society. We’ve got to get smart about energy and waste and not leave it to green capitalists.
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“…can someone explain to me scientifically why water shortages in other countries mean we should ‘waste’ less here through domestic use?”
There isn’t a direct link, obviously.
There is, however, a direct link between the embedded water in the products we import and drought elsewhere”
fair enough but that has feck all to with water charges!!
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“fair enough but that has feck all to with water charges!!”
Erm – probably not a lot, now you mention it.
I’d better shut up on the subject – I think we’ve just about covered the ground for now.
Although I have to say this discussion has hardened my opposition to water charges per se.
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(Just to get the plaudits out of the way, I haven’t dropped in for a while but this blog really is great. just though I’d point that out)
anyways,… What completely innoculates all of this, is that Scotland and England have slightly higher per-capita water consumption rates than here in Ireland.
You see, demand for water is inelastic, you won’t get a sufficient response from charges. A far greater effect could be generated by improving the infrastructure. A fraction of the billions going to the banks, if diverted to infrastructure, would drastically reduce water wastage. But this won’t happen because the objective is to bring corporate control of the supply of water.
Finally, Pidge’s numbered points above are interesting. As interesting as his posting years ago on politics.ie on whether he should join the PDs or the Greens. He chose the Greens … and neoliberal charges all-round!
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Firstly of a large % water that is “purified” is lost before it reaches most urban areas in Dublin.
[mismanagement].
Secondly there is a great “myth” that the shortage is a results of excessive usage wastage) of water usage in Dublin. [ff/ propaganda ] –
“Ireland consumes an average of 160 liters per capita per day, one of the highest in Europe
(where we are the only ones without rates, a coincidence”
Who produces these Stats about water consumption ?
They probably are calculating the loss of water (leakage) + domestic consumption !
Remember in the 60’s they told you their was no harm to smoking. these reports were supported by the tobacco companies and paid of Scientist.
The demand is not out stripping supply. The Water charges is just another tax to help a crippling
government that consists of teachers, farmers and failed business men
[no quality/no experience/no leadership]
Here’s the bottom line – if I have to pay 500 Euro next year, it is 500 Euro that I wont spend in the Centra, Hardware,Restaurant.
If you dip 2 buckets or 10 buckets into an empty well, the out put is the same. (may be the government can form a task force to work it out)
I really can not understand people who are saying this is a good idea – cost will go up every year in portion to the national debt and the level of mismanagement of the water grid.
We should be asking the question; how come we have impoverished water systems ?
Who’s in charge ?
I agree it is a natural resource that should be handled as efficiently as the Norwegians manage their oil reserves, but the reality here we never managed, develop our water system here since our neighbours put in…….
If there are people out there using 160 litres of water per day, please report to the Gards –
This is just another taxation –
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Firstly of all, a large % water that is “purified” is lost before it reaches most urban areas in Dublin.
[mismanagement].
Secondly, there is a great “myth” that the shortage is a results of excessive usage, wastage) of water in Dublin.
[ff/ propaganda ] –
“Ireland consumes an average of 160 liters per capita per day, one of the highest in Europe
(where we are the only ones without rates, a coincidence”
Who produces these Stats about water consumption ?
They probably are calculating the loss of water (leakage) + domestic consumption !
Remember in the 60′s they told you their was no harm in smoking, these reports were supported
by the tobacco companies and paid off Scientist.
The demand is not out stripping supply. The Water charges is just another tax to help a crippling
government that consists of teachers, farmers and failed business men.
[no quality/no experience/no leadership]
Here’s the bottom line – if I have to pay 500 Euro next year, it is 500 Euro that I won’t spend in the Centra, Hardware and local Restaurants.
If you dip 2 buckets or 10 buckets into an empty well, the out put is the same. (may be the government can form a task force to work it out)
I really can not understand people who are saying this is a good idea – cost will go up every year in portion to the national debt and the level of mismanagement of the water grid.
We should be asking the question; how come we have impoverished water systems ?
Who’s is in charge ?
I agree it is a natural resource that should be handled as efficiently as the Norwegians manage their oil reserves, but the reality here we never managed, develop our water system here since our neighbours put in…….
If there are people out there using 160 litres of water per day, please report them to the Gards –
This is just another taxation – tired of these Reports, Stats wake up and cop on !!!
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“ENERGY COMPANY Siemens is offering to lend the State the money needed to install up to 1.1 million domestic water meters, with the costs of the move being paid back through savings in the Government’s multi-billion euro water services programme.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/1022/1224281723388.html
Siemens built the Ardnacrusha hydro power plant.
Siemens wanted “to raise the wages of its under-paid workers only to be overruled by the Cumann na nGaedhael government.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#Ardnacrusha_hydro_power_station
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Fucking scum.
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You’ve got to admire the class solidarity, though. An object lesson.
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At Ardnacrusha:
‘There were disputes over wages and blackleg strike breakers while construction workers could find themselves sleeping on straw in a pigsty.’
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20020804/ai_n12846719/
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