The following is a confession: On July 8th, 2015 at 9.46am, I registered with Irish Water and spent the rest of the day feeling anxious and conflicted.
There was more at stake than the incentive of a €100 conservation grant, which in any case I had missed out on.
By registering with Irish Water I became complicit in a system of resource management that I do not trust to protect and uphold water as a collective good.
Since I am now complicit in what I disagree with, what is to be my redress? And am I alone? The writer Simone Weil reminds me that “If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale . . . we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, ‘that fugitive from the camp of conquerors’.”
I have realised that what is at stake is a deeper understanding of what we, as a collective of strangers and friends living on an island at the edge of Europe, hold in common as a collective good and of shared value to each of us.
Water is one such collective good. It seems clear to me that, in Ireland, how we think about, look after and provide access to this collective good is in a state of crisis.
It seems clear that water needs constitutional protection. Perhaps this would help to add weight to the “lighter scale”. – Is mise le meas,
JESSICA FOLEY
North Strand Road,
Dublin 3.
Irish water and registering dissent (Irish Times letters page)
Previously: Left To Their Own Devices
Pic: Irish Water
Lobby your politician for reform or don’t use it.
Don’t use water? Fantastic advice mate.
didn’t say don’t use water, but don’t use the water supplied by irish water if you have such an issue.
how? bathe in Evian and rainwater and do what with the waste water?
move to the countryside and use a bloody well.
but if you are going to use the water infrastructure then you pay like the rest of us, it isn’t opt out
Young Fine Gael trolls will target her use of “Is mise le meas”, suggesting that it means she’s a provo for simply using her own language.
The skill and cunning of these YFG trolls never ceases to amaze me…
Did you post that ‘evidence’ of these YFG outside agitators organising the protest outside the Dáil in the end, or was that just a fantastical delusion on your part?
No
There are many more feverishly imagined nasty comments of what YFG ‘trolls’ will say, than ones they actually have said!
so you trusted the old system of resource management?
Get over yourself, there are many people across the country paying for private supplies yet self regarding muppets like you don’t think much about them
Self regarding muppets like this guy probably lives in a housing estate with a dense population – living in a one-off house, off the mains grid, probably on expansive grounds has advantages over city living – but one disadvantage is you gotta pay to look after your own sh1t and drinking water.
So why keep bringing it up like they’re somehow victims? They chose to live off the grid. The site they built their house on wasn’t already serviced with a network paid for already through taxation – this persons house was.
they’re not victims – but neither are those who have received free water for years.
Pay for what you use and stop moaning “I already paid through my taxes” – you you didn’t it’s a BS argument
There aren’t “many” people across Ireland paying for private water supplies.
Yes there are.
#spottheJackeen
How to distract a Water Charges Protest:
Play ‘Show Me the Way to Amarillo’ from the back of a van and drive down the road. All the fat knacks will follow with their chubby arms, fags in hand swinging left to right.
Prejudice much?
You know people who put the word ‘much’ at the end of a statement are knobs?
Not prejudiced. Just well used to seeing these lazy moaning useless slobs all complaining about their lot when they only have themselves to blame for it.
And they smoke when pregnant.
Wow, that’s just so insightful and nuanced.
You all know it’s true. It’s what you all think.
Whether it is or isn’t, this would actually happen.
your disdain for water protesters is misplaced .. if no one protested you wouldnt have gotten lower rates and the 100 euro thingy for when you’re paying water bills you love so much. you complete and utter pig fupper.
I wish those concession hadn’t been made.
They have reduced the benefit we can get from charging for water.
Why on earth did she register for water charges if she doesn’t agree with them? What is the point of her letter to the Times, ‘I registered but I wish I hadn’t…’??
I think her point is that she was reluctant to sign up but has done so but that she will not willing assent to privatisation of this water body. There’s a fair point there.
Hmm. One tenuously-connected Simone Veil quote does not a decent letter make.
What you do next?
You write to every politician, by snail mail or email, and pester every single politician in your area, at least weekly, and their bosses / front benchers / Senators, demanding that IW be protected under the constitution.
That’s been my next step.
Once that’s done, we get to work on making sure the charges stay within reason – easier said then done. And do I know the answer, no I don’t.
That seems reasonable.
I’d be very wary about putting IW into the constitution.
Historically, we haven’t been very good at that kind of stuff…
Not registered & not paying.
It’s not the water charge that bugs me as much as the foundation of IW.
A disgrace. More waste. More dodgy cronyism.
Classic Ireland.
Shows we’ve learned SFA even after ‘the crash’.
+ infinite bingo
Try asking for your money back?
no need to feel conflicted. just register and pay for the damn stuff. it couldn’t be simpler really.
Or don’t.