
Hello fellow commoners.
This blog sort of relates to what we were discussing in class today and has been in the news recently. So I thought I’d post it here.
The Irish people are facing another barrier to their water access – a resource that should be free and a human right, wouldn’t you agree? The country is experiencing a problem with its water infrastructure. Irish water is being contaminated with bacteria because its out-of-date treatment systems struggle to purify it and people are forced to boil their tap water in order to be able to drink it. You’d think this is the problem the Irish are demonstrating about but in fact it gets worse.
It will cost Ireland €2billion to solve this problem and the government is planning to raise this money through a new water tax. Surprise, surprise…it has already employed a private (!) firm to install water metres in people’s homes in order to measure water usage. In the end the water tax will cost a family of four almost €500 a year, something that many will struggle to afford.
The truth is, however, that people are already paying for the water through general taxes. So essentially they are being charged twice, correct? Already, it costs the Irish government €1.2billion per year to maintain the current water supply, which has always been funded by the Exchequer. So why not continue to fund this new cost through general tax as well?
As the BBC points out “Raising money from water charges was a condition imposed on Ireland by the EU-IMF-ECB Troika as part of the country’s bailout in 2010”. (As an aside, it does make me wonder why they call it the ‘country’s bail out’, as though it was a crisis caused by the general public when it fact it was caused by banks and big companies taking on loans they were not able to meet…but I won’t go into this in detail here.) Nonetheless, these mistakes now have to be paid for by the Irish general public through charging them for the same water again. Something that should be a basic right and not something that can be sold as a commodity…twice. It is yet another example of an enclosure of a resource that should be treated and managed as a common resource, don’t you think?
One point that is more shocking however, is that Ireland continues to help big multinational companies, such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Co., avoid billions of Euros in tax by providing laws that favour them, nicknamed the ‘Double Irish’. Google alone has avoided over €2.5billion worth of tax from 2007-2009 partly through the ‘Double Irish’, which helped reduce Google’s tax to 2.4% compared to the normal 12.5%. Let’s not forget, it ‘only’ takes €2billion to solve the Irish water crisis…
Plus, as if only to frustrate the public more, the government decided to spend €86million on private consultants who advised on the setting up of a state-sponsored company in charge of water….and just so you know, this does not form part of the €2billion calculation.
So yet again, we have a situation where big companies and the financial sector’s gain is prioritised over the common people’s needs and indeed their rights. So what’s to be done about this? Of course, the likes of Google need to be taxed properly first of all but this lies in the hands of the government. With countless demonstrations already having taken place it is clear that the general public do not want this tax to be enforced, so what else could they do?

Let’s take a look at Greece, who had similar bail-out conditions put on them, and see what they’ve got planned. The Greek have come up with a counter strategy, called ‘Initiative 136’ which calls on the public of Thessaloniki to buy the government’s 40% stake in the water utility (EYATH) of Greece’s second largest city, which it is looking to privatise. ‘136’ symbolises the value of the water company for each citizen. Marioglou, a representative of the movement, explains:
“The Initiative seeks to establish a network of 16 cooperatives in Thessaloniki to manage a truly public company. Because it would be unmanageable to have one large citizen body oversee the city’s entire water works, they will decentralize. Initiative 136’s organisers propose that the neighbourhood cooperatives decide on such issues as water tariffs and an investment budget.”
So here we have a water management institution that seeks to operate on the principles of ‘cooperativism’ and conceives water as a commons not a commodity. This initiative is part of the European Water Movement who endorse the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) for the Right to Water.
Find out more about Initiative 136 here and please let me know your thoughts on this in the comments section below. Do you think it could work in favour of the people?
