For most people, the introduction of water charges is a matter of financial concern, health concern and an end to their acceptance of cronyism and the political agenda to appease the rich at the expense of the poor.
The politicians have made two arguments in defense of the establishment of Irish Water. The first is that the supply of water needs to be paid for in these times of austerity. The second is that water is a precious resource that needs to be managed better and conservation is a key factor in the company's creation.
Most people know (now) that water is already paid for. We pay € 1.2 billion each year through motor tax and VAT primarily, as these taxes had 5% and 2% respectively specifically apportioned to cover the cost of public water. So the first argument that water needs to be paid for disingenuously implies that it is not already paid for. If the amount raised by the existing measures is unsufficient to cover the cost of supply, then surely the simplest and cheapest way to increase the revenue accruing to the government would be to add a half percent more on to motor tax or VAT...?
The government has chosen not to do that. Instead it has decided to take € 200 million (half of the eventual cost) of public money to create a commercial entity to collect the tax that adding 0.5% to motor tax would have done for € 0.00
The second argument is that water conservation is apparently suddenly and completely out of the blue, (though parties have listed it in manifestos before now) a major issue of serious political concern (with lots of frowning and nodding) for our politicians.
Well, if conservation is a priority issue, I would have thought that a marketing campaign and a schools education programme would be the first thing to try. For € 2 million the government could have had a snappy tv and radio campaign with Jedward and BOD and Imelda May encouraging us to bring the dog into the bath with us, and a schools education programme so that our children could come home from school and hassle us into washing the car from a bucket and going to the toilet in a synchronised conga for a group flush.
And if it didnt work, for the same money they spent setting up a company to tax us, the government could repeat the campaign every year for the next one hundred years...!
But they didn't. They set up a commecial entity which will charge us for the water we already pay the government for, and who are under NO obligation to put ONE CENT back into infrastructure, construction or repair in a system where we don't even cconsume 50% of the water they supply because it is lost back into the ground (and back to the reservoirs) through leaks.
Get it? Half the water we are paying for we don't get and will pay for again and again, over and over. That's like going into a restaurant and asking for a litre of water, paying for a litre, getting half a litre and the other half gets put into the next litre you order and pay for but only get half a litre and so on and so on.
So if the main two political arguments are not factual, then what is the purpose of Irish Water? Privatisation ... of course ... but that still doesn't give the full picture.
Irish Water won't be privatised for a few years (we presume). Over that time the government, continue to bleat about conservation and the need to upgrade an antiquated system, will pour millions of euro of PUBLIC money into a massive construction (what?? the construction industry has another government cheque book to rape ... yes. sorry.) programme to make the Irish water supply system attractive enough for privatisation ... because a savvy businessman buying a second hand car will get the seller to foot the bill of service and repair if he possibly can before haggling for the lowest possible price.
We all know that privatisation of state bodies is a nice little earner for the politicians who engineer it and support. Directorships, preferential shares, no doubt they get free whatever (in this case water ... whatever he says about his intention to pay, you think Enda Kenny is actually going to see a bill land on his doorstep !!??), junkets, tickets to the Champions Leagure finals, holidays, conferences (with family in tow), Christmas hampers that would feed a small village, invitations to dinner with Paul McGinley, and the list goes on.
The big players like Denis O'Brien (who wasn't a big player until Michael Lowry gave him ... GAVE HIM!!! ... a licence to print money with ESAT), will be queueing up to bid on an asset they know they will get at a massively discounted price, making hundreds of millions of euro in revaluation overnight. By that time they will have a much improved infrastructure that the Irish public will have paid for ... NOT OUT OF THE MONEY YOU'LL PAY IN WATER CHARGES, DON'T FORGET ... THIS WILL BE OUT OF GENERAL TAXATION! They won't need spend on the system ... they won't have to repair any leaks that are deemed to be your responsibility, and we'll have all the regulation we need to protect the consumser, just like the financial regulator protected us from predatory banking practice.
So that means that the end game is a publicly financed private monopoly on the supply of water to Irish consumers ... right?
WRONG!!
That is not even close to the big picture.
Take a company like Veolia for example. Some of you will have heard of them.
Veolia Environnement S.A. is a French transnational company with activities in four main service and utility areas traditionally managed by public authorities – water supply and management, waste management, energy and transport services. In 2012, Veolia employed 318,376 employees in 48 countries. Its revenue in that year was recorded at €29.4 billion (wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veolia_Environnement)
Veolia Water (formerly is the water division of the French company Veolia Environnement and the world's largest supplier of water services.
Veolia has water operations in 66 countries across the globe, employing 95,789 workers worldwide and serving completely or partly about 64 metropolitan areas with more than 139 million inhabitants. It is strongest in Europe, particularly in its native France and Germany. Its biggest competitor is Suez Environnement.
Veolia is in the news this week (13th Oct 2014) because it has been charged with the disposal of contaminated items from the home of the Dallas man who died of Ebola .... that's where they rank in global services.
Why would they be interested in Ireland? Well, for a start, they're already here. http://www.veolia.ie/
Veolia Ireland have contracts with several county councils for water and waste management, they operate the LUAS in Dublin, and this year bought Dalkia, a major supplier of energy to industry.
When the gate is opened for bidding on the government's shiny new toy Irish Water, Veolia will be one of the first in the queue, with Denis O'Brien not far behind.
Why would Veolia be interested in little old Ireland? ... Here's why.
THE BIG PICTURE:
According to the Global Water Forum, set up under UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and UniTwin (Unesco Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance), the global outlook for (fresh) water covers four issues: the availability of the resource, water quality, access to water supply and sanitation, and water-related disasters.
http://www.globalwaterforum.org/2012/05/21/water-outlook-to-2050-the-oecd-calls-for-early-and-strategic-action/
Here are some key points to note:
1. Resource availability
Water demand is projected to increase by 55% globally between 2000 and 2050.
This situation is compounded by two factors. First, the number of people living in river basins under severe water stress is projected to reach 3.9 billion by 2050, totalling over 40% of the world’s population. In water stressed basins, small changes in water regimes (droughts) can have major consequences. Second, groundwaterdepletion, which more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, may become the greatest threat to agriculture and urban water supplies in several regions in the coming decades.
85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.
783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.
Over half of the world population lives in urban areas, and the number of urban dwellers grows each day. Urban areas, although better served than rural areas, are struggling to keep up with population growth (WHO/UNICEF, 2010).
With expected increases in
population, by 2030, food demand is predicted to increase by 50% (70% by
2050) (Bruinsma, 2009), while energy demand from hydropower and other
renewable energy resources will rise by 60% (WWAP, 2009). These issues
are interconnected – increasing agricultural output, for example, will
substantially increase both water and energy consumption, leading to
increased competition for water between water-using sectors.
Water
availability is expected to decrease in many regions. Yet future global
agricultural water consumption alone is estimated to increase by ~19%
by 2050, and will be even greater in the absence of any technological
progress or policy intervention.
Water for
irrigation and food production constitutes one of the greatest pressures
on freshwater resources. Agriculture accounts for ~70% of global
freshwater withdrawals (up to 90% in some fast-growing economies).
Economic
growth and individual wealth are shifting diets from predominantly
starch-based to meat and dairy, which require more water. Producing 1 kg
of rice, for example, requires ~3,500 L of water, 1 kg of beef ~15,000
L, and a cup of coffee ~140 L (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2008). This
dietary shift is the greatest to impact on water consumption over the
past 30 years, and is likely to continue well into the middle of the
twenty-first century (FAO, 2006).
About 66% of Africa
is arid or semi-arid and more than 300 of the 800 million people in
sub-Saharan Africa live in a water-scarce environment – meaning that
they have less than 1,000 m3 per capita (NEPAD, 2006).
Over 90 international water agreements were drawn up to help manage shared water basins on the African continent (UNEP, 2010).2. Water quality
The quality of surface water outside the OECD is expected to deteriorate in the coming decades.
The consequences will be increased eutrophication, biodiversity loss and disease. Micro-pollutants(medicines, cosmetics, cleaning agents, and biocide residues) are an emerging concern.
3. Water supply and sanitation
Despite tremendous efforts in the last two decades, the number of city dwellers without access to an improved water source has increased since 1990; as urbanisation has outpaced the development of infrastructure. More than 240 million people (most of them in rural areas) will still be without access to an improved water source by 2050. The situation is even more daunting given that access to an improved water source does not always mean access to safe water. In addition, 1.4 billion people are projected to be without access to basic sanitation in 2050, with severe consequences on health and environment, as well as hampering water uses downstream.
4. Water-related disasters
Big Phil has gone to Europe, so he's out of the way, right?
WRONG!
The European Parliament hasn't been a political structure for a long time now. It is now a trading floor, controlled by corporate players in industry and finance, with MEP's merely the traders on the floor ... buying and selling the assets of member states to the multi-billionaire businessmen (like Denis O'Brien) competing for shares of global asset resources (labour, natural resources, political power...and by extension...tax revenue).
Brussels has an entire sub-industry of wheelers and dealers lobbying EU politicians and policy makers on behalf of companies like Veolia, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, the European Auto industry, Food giants like Nestle, the major banking, finance and insurance companies that engineered the financial crisis and the list goes on... Brussels lobby groups are at least as powerful as the lobby groups that champion US industry in Washington.
Phil Hogan hasn't retired to Europe, he has been sent as Ireland's trading floor runner in the global sell-out to corporations that dwarf national governments. And he's not negotiating for you, he's doing it for his political buddies (all parties included), the golf-club-set, the horsey set, the golden circle financiers like Fingleton, bankers like Drumm and Boucher, movers like John Tierney and developers like Johnny Ronan.
IN A WORLD WHERE WATER WILL BE THE NEW OIL, IRELAND COULD BE A COUNTRY WEALTHY ENOUGH TO PROVIDE FREE PUBLIC SERVICES INCLUDING HEALTH, EDUCATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENT FOR IRISH PEOPLE.
We consume 2% of our frech water resources in Ireland. If we could harness even 5% of our resource, we could export clean fresh water across the world, and even trade water for oil with the Arab states.
THE CORPORATE PLAYERS KNOW THIS. THEY REALISE WHAT THE MARKET (AND MARKETING) VALUE OF FRESH CLEAN WATER FROM IRELAND WOULD BE AS A COMMODITY.
HOW MANY OF OUR POLITICIANS REALISE THIS? VERY FEW I WOULD THINK.
OUR POLITICIANS WILL GIVE AWAY THIS POSSIBLE FUTURE FOR IRELAND FOR THE PRICE OF A SIGNATURE OR A VOTE TO SECURE A VERY COMFY RETIREMENT.
We gave away our oil when we could have been the richest country in Europe, with free education, free healthcare, free public transport, true social welfare and a country we could call our own.
Now we are seeing the possibility of the give-away of our most precious resource. The infinite supply of the highest quality, soon to be most valuable commodity on the planet.
How many industries do you know that have a raw material of unlimited, infinite supply, that is totally free. It doesn't have to be mined. It doesn;t have to be grown. It doesn't have to be manufactured or synthesised. It falls out of the sky for God's sake!
THAT IS WHAT IS AT STAKE. OUR POLITICIANS DON'T SEE IT BECAUSE THEY ARE SHORT-SIGHTED PARISH PUMP HUCKSTERS CHASING A FREE PINT AND SEAT AT THE ALL-IRELAND FINAL.
THE MAJOR CORPORATIONS OF THE WORLD DO SEE IT. THEY SEE THE BIG PICTURE ... AND THEY PLAN THE END GAME.
We have the key to a future we can't even imagine - if we can only see it.
This may be the last chance we have to save our country from becoming Ireland Ltd
