Clare Daly - No research into environmental costs of domestic water meters

July 21, 2016

Clare Daly, Ind TD, was informed by Minister Simon Coveney in Dáil Questions on July 20, 2016 that his Department did not conduct research on the environmental costs of the domestic metering programme.

"The truth is out... No research into the environmental cost of installing water meters before they took the decision to start installing them; no research into whether any environmental benefits from metering would offset the environmental costs... Looks like that 'environmental benefits' argument for Irish Water has been shot to pieces." Clare Daly

Full Dáil Question and Answers

190. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 128 of 13 July 2016, if he will provide a detailed breakdown of all the research conducted into the environmental cost of the domestic water metering programme; the persons or body within or without his Department it was conducted by; and if he will provide the copies of or links to any papers documenting the results of that research, prior to that Programme commencing. [22947/16]

191. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 129 of 13 July 2016, if he will provide a detailed breakdown of all the research conducted into the environmental cost of the domestic water metering programme; the persons or body within or without his Department it was conducted by; if he will provide copies of or links to any papers documenting the results of that research, since that programme began. [22948/16]

192. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 130 of 13 July 2016, if he will provide a detailed breakdown of all the research conducted to measure the environmental cost of the domestic water metering programme, including the measurement of the carbon footprint of same against any environmental benefits arising from the programme; the persons or body within or without his Department it was conducted by, and if he will provide copies of or links to any papers documenting the results of that research. [22949/16]

Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government (Deputy Simon Coveney):   I propose to take Questions Nos. 190 to 192, inclusive, together.

  My Department did not conduct research on the environmental cost of the domestic metering programme.

  Since 1 January 2014, Irish Water has statutory responsibility for all aspects of water services planning, delivery and operation at national, regional and local levels. This includes the domestic water metering programme.

  Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public representatives. The team can be contacted via email to oireachtasmembers@water.ie or by telephone on a dedicated number, 1890 578 578.

Update

Mr Brian Leeson, Éirigí, Baile Átha Cliath, stated on July 23

"The political establishment told us that water metering would be good for the environment. Ialways thought that argument was a bit suspect. So I wrote a series of questions to establish what hard research the 'water metering is good for the environment' argument was based upon and then I asked Clare Daly (Independent TD) to submit them for me to the Department of Environment.

And guess what the answer said? The Department of Environment did NO RESEARCH into the environmental cost of water metering! Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Take a minute and think about the implications of this admission. The state embarked on one of the largest infrastructural project in the history of the state, involving about one million separate water meter installations, including the installation of 800,000 new water meter boundary boxes, without doing a full environmental impact study!

No research to establish the carbon footprint of a massive energy-intensive installation programme.

No research to establish the environmental cost / benefit of water meter installation.

I don't know what the precise outcome of that research would have been, but it should have done BEFORE any decision to commence with water metering was taken.

This admission has exposed the 'environmental benefits' argument for the lie that is always was. Water Meters and the Water Tax turn a natural resource into a commodity - a necessary step on the road to full privatisation.

My questions have now gone to Irish Water to see what research they conducted into the carbon footprint created by the water meter installation programme. Don't hold your breath."

GSOC report addresses Garda response to water protests

July 21, 2016

Gardaí acted proportionately in the majority of water protests last year, the Garda Ombudsman has found.

GSOC's Annual Report reveals that it only sent one incident of Garda behaviour at water protests to the DPP - who then decided not to prosecute.

The report says GSOC received 40 complaints about Garda behaviour at water protests or meter installations - but over half were dropped because the complaint was either dropped, or was not made by a direct witness.

Most of the complaints concerned allegations of assault or excessive force. Others concerned allegations of a disciplinary nature, such as neglect of duty or abuse of authority.

GSOC said that it examined footage taken from Garda body cameras, and from videos shared on social media.

"No clear evidence of garda misconduct was shown in the majority of the videos and in some cases they showed that the actions of the gardaí concerned were proportionate," the report states.

"GSOC sent one investigation file, related to a complaint of assault on a female, to the Director of Public Prosecutions. No prosecution was directed.

"A disciplinary investigation concerning the conduct of three gardaí in relation to this case remained open at end 2015.

"Over a third of complainants did not co-operate with the GSOC investigations or withdrew their complaints, making investigation difficult.

"There was insufficient evidence in any of the other investigations to warrant criminal or disciplinary action."

The complaints were among 2,000 in total received last year, with the most common complaints around abuse of authority and neglect of duty.

“We believe that some complaints, in particular those that relate to quality of service from gardaí, are best addressed through a managerial rather than a disciplinary response,” said GSOC Chairperson Justice Mary Ellen Ring

“We have put suggested reforms before the Minister and Department of Justice and Equality.”

“We would also like to see more engagement by gardaí with the informal resolution process, when minor complaints are made.

“These types of complaints, as they are currently handled, are resource intensive for both GSOC and the Garda Síochána - and often they do not provide a satisfactory experience for complainants either. Moving towards a resolution model must be a focus for GSOC.”

Source: breakingnew.ie, July 18, 2016

The President of Belgian Magistrates: Neoliberalism is a form of Fascism

July 20, 2016

Neoliberalism is a species of fascism
By Manuela Cadelli, President of the Magistrates’ Union of Belgium

The time for rhetorical reservations is over. Things have to be called by their name to make it possible for a co-ordinated democratic reaction to be initiated, above all in the public services.

Liberalism was a doctrine derived from the philosophy of Enlightenment, at once political and economic, which aimed at imposing on the state the necessary distance for ensuring respect for liberties and the coming of democratic emancipation. It was the motor for the arrival, and the continuing progress, of Western democracies.

Neoliberalism is a form of economism in our day that strikes at every moment at every sector of our community. It is a form of extremism.

Fascism may be defined as the subordination of every part of the State to a totalitarian and nihilistic ideology.

I argue that neoliberalism is a species of fascism because the economy has brought under subjection not only the government of democratic countries but also every aspect of our thought

The state is now at the disposal of the economy and of finance, which treat it as a subordinate and lord over it to an exte3nt that puts the common good in jeopardy.

The austerity that is demanded by the financial milieu has become a supreme value, replacing politics. Saving money precludes pursuing any other public objective. It is reaching the point where claims are being made that the principle of budgetary orthodoxy should be included in state constitutions. A mockery is being made of the notion of public service.

The nihilism that results from this makes possible the dismissal of universalism and the most evident humanistic values: solidarity, fraternity, integration and respect for all and for differences.

There is no place any more even for classical economic theory: work was formerly an element in demand, and to that extent there was respect for workers; international finance has made of it a mere adjustment variable.

Every totalitarianism starts as distortion of language, as in the novel by George Orwell. Neoliberalism has its Newspeak and strategies of communication that enable it to deform reality. In this spirit, every budgetary cut is represented as an instance of modernization of the sectors concerned. If some of the most deprived are no longer reimbursed for medical expenses and so stop visiting the dentist, this is modernization of social security in action!

Abstraction predominates in public discussion so as to occlude the implications for human beings.

Thus, in relation to migrants, it is imperative that the need for hosting them does not lead to public appeals that our finances could not accommodate. Is it In the same way that other individuals qualify for assistance out of considerations of national solidarity?

The cult of evaluation

Social Darwinism predominates, assigning the most stringent performance requirements to everyone and everything: to be weak is to fail. The foundations of our culture are overturned: every humanist premise is disqualified or demonetized because neoliberalism has the monopoly of rationality and realism. Margaret Thatcher said it in 1985: “There is no alternative.” Everything else is utopianism, unreason and regression. The virtue of debate and conflicting perspectives are discredited because history is ruled by necessity.

This subculture harbours an existential threat of its own: shortcomings of performance condemn one to disappearance while at the same time everyone is charged with inefficiency and obliged to justify everything. Trust is broken. Evaluation reigns, and with it the bureaucracy which imposes definition and research of a plethora of targets, and indicators with which one must comply. Creativity and the critical spirit are stifled by management.2 And everyone is beating his breast about the wastage and inertia of which he is guilty.

The neglect of justice

The neoliberal ideology generates a normativity that competes with the laws of parliament. The democratic power of law is compromised. Given that they represent a concrete embodiment of liberty and emancipation, and given the potential to prevent abuse that they impose, laws and procedures have begun to look like obstacles.

The power of the judiciary, which has the ability to oppose the will of the ruling circles, must also be checkmated. The Belgian judicial system is in any case underfunded. In 2015 it came last in a European ranking that included all states located between the Atlantic and the Urals. In two years the government has managed to take away the independence given to it under the Constitution so that it can play the counterbalancing role citizens expect of it. The aim of this undertaking is clearly that there should no longer be justice in Belgium.

A caste above the Many

But the dominant class doesn’t prescribe for itself the same medicine it wants to see ordinary citizens taking: well-ordered austerity begins with others. The economist Thomas Piketty has perfectly described this in his study of inequality and capitalism in the twenty-first century (French edition, Seuil, 2013).

In spite of the crisis of 2008 and the hand-wringing that followed, nothing was done to police the financial community and submit them to the requirements of the common good. Who paid? Ordinary people, you and me.

And while the Belgian State consented to 7 billion-euro ten-year tax breaks for multinationals, ordinary litigants have seen surcharges imposed on access to justice (increased court fees, 21% taxation on legal fees). From now on, to obtain redress the victims of injustice are going to have to be rich.

All this in a state where the number of public representatives breaks all international records. In this particular area, no evaluation and no costs studies are reporting profit. One example: thirty years after the introduction of the federal system, the provincial institutions survive. Nobody can say what purpose they serve. Streamlining and the managerial ideology have conveniently stopped at the gates of the political world.

The security ideal

Terrorism, this other nihilism that exposes our weakness in affirming our values, is likely to aggravate the process by soon making it possible for all violations of our liberties, all violations of our rights, to circumvent the powerless qualified judges, further reducing social protection for the poor, who will be sacrificed to “the security ideal”.

Salvation in commitment

These developments certainly threaten the foundations of our democracy, but do they condemn us to discouragement and despair?

Certainly not. 500 years ago, at the height of the defeats that brought down most Italian states with the imposition of foreign occupation for more than three centuries, Niccolo Machiavelli urged virtuous men to defy fate and stand up against the adversity of the times, to prefer action and daring to caution. The more tragic the situation, the more it necessitates action and the refusal to “give up” (The Prince, Chapters XXV and XXVI).

This is a teaching that is clearly required today. The determination of citizens attached to the radical of democratic values is an invaluable resource which has not yet revealed, at least in Belgium, its driving potential and power to change what is presented as inevitable. Through social networking and the power of the written word, everyone can now become involved, particularly when it comes to public services, universities, the student world, the judiciary and the Bar, in bringing the common good and social justice into the heart of public debate and the administration of the state and the community.

Neoliberalism is a species of fascism. It must be fought and humanism fully restored.9

Source: Defend Democracy Press, July 11, 2016

Published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, 3.3.2016
translated from French by Wayne Hall
Le néolibéralisme est un fascisme, par Manuela Cadelli