Save Poolbeg

at


This afternoon.

At Poolbeg, Dublin.

On Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed it had sent a team of inspectors to the Ringsend wastewater treatment plant in Dublin – after it emerged that there had been discharges from the plant in Poolbeg.

Previously: ‘Further Discharges Expected’

Slick

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12 thoughts on “Save Poolbeg

  1. Joe Small

    This is, in part, a consequence of scrapping water charges. Irish Water now struggles to get the money from government to build the necessary infrastructure. If we had reasonable water charges like almost every other modern state, they would have an independent funding source so people in Dublin wouldn’t have to swim in their own poo every time there’s heavy rain. Choices have consequences.

      1. Joe Small

        No, state owned but financed by water charges. I don’t believe in privatising any part of the water infrastructure.

    1. eoin

      The consequence of not prosecuting a corporation and key employees for what is, in my opinion, criminal behaviour just encourages more of this outrage.

      Irish Water has blown so much on consultants, useless metering, security for meter installers, a billing system that costs more than it collects and golden termination payments. Of course, the responsible minister is Eoghan Murphy so none of this should come as a surprise.

    2. topsy

      Perhaps Joe as you feel so strongly about paying for water there’s nothing to stop you from setting up a direct debit with Irish Water and making regular contributions.
      I’m busy on the other hand paying of private debt which the government foisted on the people of Ireland. €60 billion interest on that debt in the last 10 years.

    3. McVitty

      Irish Water was set up as part of the Troika deal to bring in EUR250m in new tax revenues, with an expected operating cost of EUR50m – there were about 1.4m houses in Ireland at the time – do the math, remove 10% of households (on grounds of disability etc) and you get close to the proposed charge that emerged after months of consultation. The mission statement made no mention of water quality. By being a charge, it would not categorically meet the definition of your standard environmental/pigouvian tax. It was only ever a scam. Use of road tax to get it off the ground was arguably illegal. You would think the EIB would have assisted us but no.

      With that said, we need to fund water infrastructure and penalise abuses, but Irish Water was not one bit convincing and we’ve had VAT rise to fund water infrastructure – so that amount of VAT should be earmarked for water infrastructure maintenance.

      We’ll have another racket emerge to address environmental concerns and it have the same approach – charge everyone a penny rather than charging the abusers a pound…or God forbid, identifying incentives.

      Studying economics, in particular environmental economics in college was a waste of time…it’s of no use in the read world where deals are done with a spit and a handshake or purely on gut/principle.

    4. Truth in the News

      Water Charges, where did all the money that came from Europe, the large amount
      taken out of the Motor Taxation Take, and not least the Vat take upped in 1977 from
      5% to 12 and 12 to 23 and Irish Water should be shut down at once, all it is, is an
      expensive quango to give jobs and pensions to those that left the Local Authorities
      and what we now have is two outfits doing the same job , …where there was one
      in Local Authorities now there are a couple more in Irish Water, What we need is
      a Unit in the Irish Army the same as the US Army Corp of Engineers, never mind
      sending them minding the rest of the world.

  2. Joe

    The Ringend issue is the result of what happens when mega-bucks of taxpayers money was squandered by FG/labour on the attempted privatisaion of water, coupled with the ongoing costs of the useless billing company “Irish Water” instead of spending it on water infrastructure. Time the whole rotten edifice is torn down!

  3. eoin

    “Discharges”? What a repellent word, it’s nearly at the level of pee and poo and suggests the millions being spent by Irish Water on PR is not working. After the PR barrage over the past few weeks, we should all be referring to this outrage as “Stormwater XS” by Calvin Klein or “Algal Bloom” by Issey Miyake. Discharges, indeed.

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