No to Water Tax! No to Water Meters! Keep Water Public!

national | miscellaneous | event notice Wednesday May 25, 2011 15:19 by Michael O'Brien, Eddie Conlon, Sinéad Kennedy - United Left Alliance contact at unitedleftalliance dot org

Protest at during Minister’s speech at big business conference organised to prepare for water meter installation

Croke Park Conference Centre
31st May 8:30am
Supported by the United Left Alliance

This week a senior engineer told Cork City Councillors that 60% of that city’s water supply leaked out of the system. This situation is repeated up and down the country to one degree or another.

However instead of investing the resources needed to repair our water supply as a matter of urgency this government is determined to press on with the crazy strategy of installing water meters in homes that don’t already have one. This is estimated to cost €600 million. The government intends to fund this by introducing a flat rate ‘utility charge’ next year and then once meters are installed to begin charging people based on their use of water.

In the longer term this is about turning an essential public service into a commercial product that can be privatised so that big business can profit off our backs. This is what happened with bin collection services around the country

The conference taking place on 31st May is about big business interests sharing out the spoils. German multinational Hydrometer which specialises in water meter manufacture and Celtic Anglian Water which specialises in water billing systems are virtually running the show with Minister for Environment and Local Government, Phil Hogan, kicking off proceedings.

It costs €420 to attend this event which is obviously intended for subcontractors who want to bid for this work.

The United Left Alliance says water is a public resource. Access to water is a basic right for all. We are opposed to privitisation. We want the water we have to be conserved. Unemployed engineers and construction workers should be taken on by local authorities to repair our water system as part of a programme of emergency public works which our TDs will be proposing to the Dáil next month. This could save billions of litres of purified drinking water.

The United Left Alliance along with other groups supports the No Water Tax campaign which was launched last year in preparation for the fight against the introduction of water charges.

We are committed to a campaign of mass nationwide non-payment of this unfair tax which is one of many fresh attacks the Fine Gael Labour government have lined up for us. With the active participation of ordinary people up and down the country we can defeat the water tax just as we did in the mid nineties.

Join us in this fight. Come to the protest, spread the word and get active in the No Water Tax campaign and join the United Left Alliance