This afternoon.
A meeting of the joint committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services is taking place.
From the meeting…
.@IRLDeptFinance Chief Economist and Asst. Sec Gen John McCarthy tells future funding of water it shouldn’t be funded from general taxation
— Páraic Gallagher (@paraicgallagher) January 18, 2017
He says no public utility would be funded like that and cites examples of electricity and gas
— Páraic Gallagher (@paraicgallagher) January 18, 2017
Dept of Environment tells water committee that Irish Water will need an extra €114 million if charges remain suspended this year.
— Hugh O’Connell (@oconnellhugh) January 18, 2017
Watch live here
Previously: At The Water Committee Meeting
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#WONTPAY
So John McCarthy is Noonan’s lackey. nothing to see here
The problem with general taxation is that it goes up and down depending on the economy.
When times are good, there are flashier things to spend on, like visible roads.
When times are bad, no infrastructure spending happens. But this is precisely when it should happen as a counter weight to an economic downturn.
We need water, all day, every day.
We have a growing population, we need to protect our health, we have a broken system of raw sewage into rivers & sea, we still have areas with very poor or at risk of contamination that needs to be fixed.
We need to have dedicated, ring fenced finance to to that.
To do it fairly, we need to protect water as a public utility, have a good free personal allowance, a fair waiver system for those who can’t afford it and a cost for for who use in excess.
Fire away!
I’ll fire. .. complete agreement.
Nice argument but fg want to see our water privatised and this can not be allowed.
Can we all just assume it’s not going to be privatised, and try think of reasonable answers.
It won’t be privatised. I bet me left ball on it.
Well, let’s assume it is going to be privatised – because Fine Gael, Fine Fail, Labour have all shyer away from a referendum. Alan Kelly even tried to substitute a plebiscite for a referendum, knowing quite well that a plebiscite is just an opinion and doesn’t have to be acted upon.
So, let’s assume that the plan IS to privatise it.
Haha stop that with your common sense will ya?
It certainly wasnt set up to remain a quango!!
You don’t spend that much money on a pretend utility thats never going to play it’s part in liberalising water services benefitting the consumer with competition in the retail market.
And the European Commission/eurostat did state Irish Water would ultimately be privatised.
Then they were gently asked by the CSO to look at what they were writing.
Hardly worth anything considering your testicular deduction
Neither will the ESB they said
Explain that to me panty.
I think electricity was free to homes when electrification of the irish free state began.
That’s the end game for FG, FF and LP privatisation under their quest for complete capitalist society..
Well said.
Irish Water need an extra 114m, if charges remain suspended.. Time to get rid of Irish Water then isn’t it.
The thing still seems to be about getting agreement that it costs the exchequer €594 to provide each household with water each year.
That of course is not true, but it’s one of those conclusions that was arrived at very early in the proceedings.
It’s not true because it costs roughly €900m a year to provide water to households PLUS the industrial, pharma and agri sectors.
But someone got the bright idea that shifting the €900m pa onto domestic users was a good idea whilst leaving private enterprise to cough up just €200m pa.