Anti-Water Charges

Over 100 people packed into the Teachers’ Club in Dublin, last Saturday, to attend an anti-water charges forum convened by Joe Higgins, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin.

THANKS TO the Green Party and Fianna Fail’s continued attempts to make ordinary workers pay for the economic crisis, domestic water charges are on the way back for householders, 15 years after they were abolished.

There are widespread media reports today that the government will attempt to impose water charges on households in the report of the Commission on Taxation.

The Socialist Party is issuing a strong warning to the government that any attempt to re-introduce water charges will be met by a mass non-payment campaign to make this double tax uncollectible.

There are widespread media reports today that the government will attempt to impose water charges on households in the report of the Commission on Taxation.

This would be another intolerable imposition on the incomes of hard-pressed working people arising from the chronic crisis in Irish capitalism.

By Councillor Mick Barry

GREEN PARTY Minister for the Environment John Gormley spoke in April of the inevitability of the return of domestic water charges. With the Commission on Taxation due to report to the government in July on methods of increasing tax revenue and with another Budget due in December, this represents a real threat to workers and their families. Minister Mary Hanafin told the Irish Times last December, “If we had domestic water charges in Ireland, families would be paying €700 or €800 per annum.”

Water charges were strongly resisted throughout the country since 1983. In the end it was the intense battle waged in Dublin for three years which resulted in their abolition in 1996. There were many facets of this campaign but this article will try to outline the key lessons that can be learned and on that basis pose the tasks facing the new movement against refuse charges.