Tag Archives: Water Charges

water-charges-no-leaflet

Campaign ‘literature’ for the No side in a recent water charges referendum
in Trinity College Dublin

Two weeks ago, a water charges referendum was held in Trinity College Dublin in order to give the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) an official position on the introduction of water charges.

The students were asked if they should campaign to abolish water charges.

Of the 4,619 who voted, 2,110 students (46%) voted ‘Yes’.

Further to this…

Liam Crowley writes in Trinity News:

“On the point of the referendum campaign, it must be pointed out that the ‘No’ side engaged in misleading and disingenuous tactics. The leaflets and posters issued by the ‘No’ campaign were designed along a myth/fact type of structure. It was presented as being a myth that ‘Irish water will be privatised’. The corresponding ‘fact’ was that ‘only the Irish people can decide to privatise Irish Water through a referendum.’ This is far removed from the truth.”

“The government has forcefully resisted all demands that the semi-state company ‘Irish Water’ be protected from privatisation by ensuring a referendum is provided in the case of any government wanting to sell the company. The Oireachtas, where a government majority is in-built, will be the place where any decision to privatise our water is taken.”

“Irish people could not have less control over our water than as it stands with the current formation of water charges. If privatisation of our water was not on the agenda, then a referendum would have been guaranteed in the event of possible water privatisation. The blatant untruth that currently a referendum is necessary for water privatisation should not have escaped college media scrutiny and the SU’s Electoral Commission should have acted decisively to stop the dissemination of false information.”

FIGHT!

What does the result of the water charges referendum say about Trinity students? (Liam Crowley, Trinity News)

Pic: Trinity News

watermarch

Seasonally-attired protestors at yesterday’s anti-Irish Water demonstration

PE Power rhymes:

People thronged till Dublin felt
Alive as downtown Delhi
Your heart couldn’t help but swell with pride
(Unless you’re Alan Kelly)

Placards, blackguards, taps on hats
Young and old and middle
Oh how your soul would sing for joy
(While D*n*s joined in on the fiddle)

Some say 100,000 marched
Chanting for our deliverance
RTE’s stooge saw a thousand or two.
Or should we split the difference?

United in a common cause –
No bond so great as unjust laws –
Government trembling, war declared…
Enda Kenny wakes up pale and scared
Reaches for his Times, smiles as he reads –
“Sinn Fein took over.” Exactly what he needs.

(Pic: Barbara McCarthy)

coonan

Deputy Noel Coonan (Fine Gael) has jihad it up to here with the water protests.

“I come from the town of Templemore where we train every Garda in the country and the people down there and right across the country that I’ve met are horrified by what’s going on. And I think that it has been an awakening call for them because they are now concerned about elements of socialists, the so-called wealthy Socialist Party led by ‘The Murph’ and company and aided and abetted by extremists within our colleagues here from Sinn Féin. And I think that that needs to be nipped in the bud. The people have given that signal to us now: nip that in the bud, if not we are facing what is potentially an ISIS situation in the Middle East if those people are allowed get on to do what they’re doing. God help this country and people realise that.

We talk about Dublin and the people who are protesting here in Dublin the socialist led group, they don’t care about the country people. Country people all over down through the years had to pay for their water. Be it in group schemes, private wells, whatever and they want to act like parasites and live off of the country people. They’ve never acknowledged the role that the people down the country, small business people who operate from their own home who have to pay for their water. Businesses in the country who’ve had to pay for their water, the role that they have given in this country in bad times. They provided the money.”

They’ll be heading here soon.

Mark his words.

michellem

“I look forward to seeing already the implementation on the ground in my own town €5m has been spent on fixing leaking pipes. Pipes that had local authorities out every other day, fixing pipes along the road, such a waste of resources. Businesses, substantial businesses without water, whole housing estates without water and when you look into the ground which I did myself, the pipes had just simply melted….

And of course, water charges are not popular but the social benefits that we will reap now and into the future and already the plans for Roscommon are being implemented and people will in the very short-term I expect and we’ve been told will benefit from that. We will all reap it in the end. We are building something for the future here. We are addressing problems that under the previous system could not be addressed in the past. So let us not be swatted from our goal in returning this country to its productive very best by those who talk but don’t have a clue how to do it.”

Mayo TD Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) speaking in the Dáil this morning on Irish Water.

There you go now.

enda1

Taoiseach Enda Kenny on RTÉ’s Nine News tonight:

“And I think it should also be said Eileen, if I may say so that the average worker, a single worker on the minimum wage of 35,000 is going to get back €400 in the income tax returns starting in January.”

A Freudian slip from An Taoiseach.

Minimum wage is €8.65 per hour, 39 hours per week, 52 weeks per year = €17,542.

He should do more of these.

New charging structure of Irish Water to cost Exchequer €84m (RTÉ News)

bradford1

Senator McCarthy Paul Bradford (Reform Alliance) called out the Socialist Party on the latest water charges protests this afternoon.

I raised here last week, Cathaoirleach the fact that we were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’m sure Deputy Murphy and his colleagues in the Socialist Party and that ilk wished that the Berlin Wall and all it stood for, was still standing. Because they in their Trotsky Marxist view of the world have absolutely nothing in common with genuine working class people on this island….We must learn from this disaster but we all stand shoulder to shoulder with the Tánaiste and indeed anybody who’s been put under unfair pressure by mob rule. We must never give in to mob rule in this country. We haven’t given in to the mob rule of the Provisional IRA in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and we must not give in to mob rule now of extreme left-wing socialists who look back to a panacea of the Soviet Union and North Korea. That’s their aspiration for our island and it’s not an aspiration that I, and the vast majority of the people on this land would share.

1991 called.

They’d like their college debating rhetoric and striped shirt returned.