Irish Water's massive media offensive designed to influence political opinion a week before D-Day.

March 29, 2016

By James Quigley

Does anyone notice how the Irish Times is churning out articles lately in support of Irish Water and their controversial water charges? Certainly for a newspaper these particular issues are topical especially given the present political uncertainty in the country and how the very existence of Irish Water is at stake. it is no wonder that some very influential parties are worried and it would be no surprise that they would use influence to protect their interests. Now that things are hotting up in the political arena where parties and Independent TDs are jostling for power in a quest to form a new government, there might just be other motives at play here.

Political uncertainty in Ireland has arisen out of the public's opposition to Irish Water and water charges. This opposition was demonstrated in the results of the Irish General Election on February 26th, 2016. Support for the former Fine Gael/Labour coalition government collapsed and it went instead to parties and independents opposing austerity, corruption and supporting the abolition of Irish Water, water charges.

The incredible story of this election was how well Fianna Fail did especially since it was crushed at the last election. It is the view of many that this success was in now small measure due to it's policy priorities on Irish Water.

Irish Times Articles

Reading the Irish Times articles, a person could be forgiven for thinking that there is some type of agenda at play. Could the media and interested parties be trying to influence political decisions? Certainly Irish Water, at present, is very worried about their very existence. This would probably be enough for the company to do all it can to protect itself. And what better way to stamp it's influence than through the media. It wouldn't be the first time for newspapers to be used in this way after all 'the pen is mightier than the sword'. Here's a quote from the Irish Times' first editorial after the 1916 Rising,

“the surgeon's knife has been put to the corruption in the body of Ireland, and its course must not be stayed until the whole malignant growth has been removed... Sedition must be rooted out of Ireland once for all” Irish Independent, 'Out of step: Dublin newspapers' reaction to the Rising', Feb. 18th 2016.

Although not as blood thirsty as the 1916 editorial quite a few of the more recent Irish Times articles involving Irish Water seem to be bias in their attack against opposition . Maybe the reporters and contributors are right and are only voicing common sense. Perhaps there is nobody in the opposition camp that has the ability to voice any credible argument against their sound economic plans . Or could it be 'money counts' and 'he who pays the piper calls the tune'? Certainly Irish Water has plenty of clout, a seemingly never ending supply of money and what seems to be a squadron of enthusiastic artist ready and willing to blow it's horn.

Political State of Play

We are now just over a month since the Irish General Election which took place on February 26th, 2016. See graphic below for results. Thirty two days later and we still have no Government. There has been one inconclusive vote held for a Taoiseach and the final crunch vote comes next week on April 6th .

Fine Gael, Labour, Green Party and some Independents support Irish Water. Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, Anti Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit, Social Democrats and some Independents oppose water charges and Irish Water.

None of the major parties on their own can form a government and realistically the options are limited. The two right wing parties Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fail (FF) are in the driving seat but neither can form a government without support from other parties, Independents or each other.
Round one of talks with Independents have already taken place and round two takes place during this week. It is looking like neither FG or FF on their own can gather enough support to reach 79 seats for an overall majority.
FG and FF could form a grand ultra right wing majority coalition. No doubt this would be the preferred option of the establishment and some party members. However, there still remains an entrenched animosity or rivalry between these parties and having tasted power individually neither want to relinquish it. Also with a choice of establishment parties such as FG and FF there was always the illusion of democracy. It is because of this that some type of minority FG led government is the most likely. In order to achieve this FG will have to do a deal with FF and it is looking like FG's Universal Social Charge policy and FF's anti Irish Water and position on water charges policy are going to be the main bargaining chips. Will it be so long people, all you who voted for our red line issue, the abolition of Irish Water?

Sinn Fein can not be let off the hook lightly. With 24 seats they have quite a bit of say. Theoretically they couldwield a balance of power and could prevent a total right wing government. This could be done by them forming a coalition with so called fellow republicans Fianna Fail. This scenario seems unlikely since SF categorically refuses to talk with FF. They see themselves as socialists and they do not want to prop up a right wing party. However, to the layman's eye this stance seems rigid, it looks like principles before people or party before country. This is an option former Fianna Fail Tanaiste Mary Couglan, believed possible when she said “ a coalition deal with Sinn Fein in Government could work if they wanted it to.” Irish Mirror, March 21st , 2016'Fianna Fail can go into power with Sinn Fein'

Will Fianna Fail do a deal and renege on their manifesto core priority of abolishing Irish Water and ending water charges? It seems Irish Water and the Irish Times thinks so and they are both moving in for the kill.

Irish Times Onslaught

In many of the recent Irish Times articles there seems to be an emphasis on rubbishing any opposition to Irish Water. They present the company as a knight in shining armour and warn us of impending doom. Quite often the articles highlight the old decrepit water system run by 31 county councils as inefficient and cumbersome. The number 31 is mentioned often and we are constantly reminded that if we want pristine and healthy water then a modern centralised and cost effective agency is the only way to go.

Noel Dempsey
Irish Times Friday, March 25 'Noel Dempsey: Safe drinking water requires a national utility'.
Noel, an ex Fianna Fail environment minister, is a good catch for the any newspaper but he is writing in The Irish Times. He says himself that“I was the minister who negotiated the EU Water Framework Directive for Ireland. I opposed the compulsory imposition of water charges on Ireland”

Noel has since had a change of heart since he goes on“ We are now facing a situation where another generation will suffer inadequate infrastructure and unsafe water. A national utility is the only entity that can deliver the water system we deserve. Irish Water is the only game in town in relation to delivering quality water – primarily because so much investment has been put in place, with some significant achievements, that turning back now is neither cost-effective nor desirable.”

Cliff Taylor
In his article in The Irish Times, Sat, March 26th'A new brass plate on the door is no guarantee anything useful will happen' Cliff cynically weaves into his piece yarns that any opposition to Irish Water is somehow abnormal.

He tells us“Having taken the initial cost and done the work, calls to abolish Irish Water are a reversal of the normal demand to create an agency to solve a problem.”
Cliff continues “ Now we are pretending that abolishing an institution can make a problem better. Someone needs to arrange to fix our water supply and waste water and abolishing Irish Water and setting up some other lesser quango doesn't seem a very clever solution – handing it all back to the local authorities seems an even worse idea.”

Clever writers with subjective opinions but they do not surpass the latest Irish Times article “Water charges irreversible in EU law, say lawyers” Irish Times, March 29th, 2016 by Arthur Beesley. (because of Irish Times subscription charges the article can not be read onlinebut can be readhere Fliuch Off Irish Water)

This article is not really an opinion piece but rather it is what only could be described as propaganda, straight from the horses mouth. Irish Water has now entered the fray, directly and unashamedly. They have brought out the big guns in the form of their legal representatives, Garrett Simons and Michael M Collins.

Mr Beesley writes

“Legal opinion commissioned by the utility company says the State is required under EU law to keep the contentious regime in place. There is no possibility under European law for the State to suspend or scrap water charges, legal advisers have told Irish Water. Amid a deep political schism over the charges,. a legal opinion commissioned by the utility company says the State is required under EU law to keep the contentious regime in place.

The advice – from senior counsel Garrett Simons and Michael M Collins – argues that there is no option under European law to return to the practice of not charging for water.”

“The views of Irish Water have not been sought in political talks. However, the company will say in any engagements with political leaders that it sees no legal way of reversing course.”

That line was clever, a bit of reverse psychology. While saying that their advise was never sought they continue to advise political leaders and in addition, warn them of some nasty legal repercussions. It is not for nothing that Irish Water spend a fortune on public relations. I suppose that line alone could have cost a few grand.

An antidote to the official 1916 centenary commemorations by Ken Loach

March 28, 2016

Ken Loach speaking on the Centenary of the Easter Rising @ Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church London on 7 March 2016. Hosted by Socialist Resistance and Pluto Books The speakersincluded author Geoff Bell and former MP and activist Bernadette McAliskey. Ken Loach asks that we celebrate the Centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising by rejecting the revisionist history and standing in solidarity with the Irish in their quest for a free and united Ireland.

Ken Loach:

It's a real privilege to be here and I'll only speak for a few minutes because I'm very interested to hear the historical background to ... 1916 from Geoff – and I'm particularly good to hear Bernadette's take on what's going on in Ireland now so – I'm the interlude, really. And first of all to say it's fitting to discuss 1916 because this year we're going to get a lot of revisionism about 1916: It was just an adventure – it was irresponsible – it had no hope of success - it was a distraction and so on. But to me it was an essential step in the struggle for independence. And it wasn't a wild adventure - it was absolutely essential and inevitable and right.

You mentioned mobile phones in the beginning. If they'd had a mobile phone maybe they wouldn't have countermanded the order to rise up in the other parts of Ireland and then we might have had a bit more of a success. (I hate mobile phones, but maybe mobile phones, even two at a time, would have been quite handy.) But it was a huge event and the, it goes without saying, the bravery and the commitment and the ideas of those who were there have left a mark that I think few events can match.

I just want to say a couple of things really: First of all, as the only person from this side of the water I think on the platform, a couple of points drawn from our, the perspective on this side of the water: I think it's important to say that the violence over the centuries has been done by the British to the Irish and that what we are told and what we perceive (jokes about a mobile ringing in audience) (all laugh) but what we are told is that it's the Irish that are the terrorists. Nothing could be further from the truth. And we're used to hearing this and we take it for granted and the news sort of washes over us and yes we say, well it's all propaganda. And we don't fight it.

And I think it's really important that we do challenge it because it's the context in which everybody, apart from people who are concerned about it and maybe people here, but it's the context in which people in general feel what is happening. And they see it where terrorist equals the IRA or Republicans and they forget or they're not told or they don't know that of course the terrorism was the British. They forget about Carson, they forget about the British Army, they forget about the mutiny to install partition and so on and the violence was done to the Irish people. And I think that's a basic building block of our understanding of what went on.

Of course we get the examples of this all the time. And it's very subtle, it's very nuanced. It's in the people you hear interviewed. It's in the questions they're asked. It's the sub-text of every interview. And just to give one example, which I guess you've all heard or listened to but in the story last week of the Omagh bomb where the last suspect was freed - I mean a terrible, appalling event of course but it was routinely described as the worst atrocity of The Troubles – the worst atrocity of The Troubles. There were I think either twenty-nine or thirty-one (depending how you count them) people killed and two hundred and twenty-eight injured. A terrible event. The Dublin and Monaghan bombs, which of course you will probably know about, in 1974 actually killed thirty-four and injured three hundred. But they were planted by the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the British Army and security forces have been implicated. They're not mentioned. That is – now, comparing two appalling atrocities is not very attractive, but why on Earth would you say the one that killed thirty-one was the worst atrocity when the British were responsible, or the Loyalists were responsible, for killing thirty-four? Why? Why? Are they ignorant? Did the journalists not do the research? No. It's part of the knowledge, it's part of the understanding that has to be passed on. And that's the context in which we judge it. And it's permanent and it's consistent and it's part of the 'mood music' whenever Ireland is discussed.

And I think we have to challenge it, we have to fight it, we can't just let it happen - we have to oppose it. There's numbers you can ring, there's demands we have to make because otherwise it just continues and continues. We expect it from the press and the BBC flaunts it's objectivity but of course it isn't objective it is the voice of the state and that, I think, that should be part of our demands of the new Labour leadership: That when they develop a media policy the role of the BBC in perpetuating myths like this have to challenged. And it's very well saying: Yes, we defend public (inaudible) broadcasting but we don't defend lies! And these are lies. (applause)

The second point I wanted to make was that Ireland was where the British learned to be imperialists. It was the first colony and there's a remnant of it still which makes it probably the last. For seven to eight hundred years the process has been in action. And you can see it and the pattern was repeated in all the other colonies - and it has a pattern. First of all you steal the land and you impose the taxes. Then you put down every opposition brutally, with violence, with ritualised killings, with slaughter. Absolute violence. Then you install settlers to rule on behalf of the absentee landlords. And then you promote sectarianism, maybe on a religious basis or in whatever way, promote sectarianism to keep the independence movement divided.

And then of course you would enact laws that keep the people from that country subjugated so that there are laws to prevent them taking part in the governance of their own country or making any significant inroads into the wealth of that country. And then finally you fight the independence movement with every ounce of strength you can. And finally - finally the last - the last trick is when the independence struggle looks like it's winning you make certain you pass the political power onto people you can do deals with. So in other words you split them which is what the old-class warrior Churchill and his cohorts did was when they proposed a treaty they phrased it in such a way that it would divide the Republicans and then they armed the people they wanted to do a deal with to attack and slaughter their opponents.

And that's the process of imperialism and they learned it in Ireland and they're still learning it and they're still practicing it and, as I said, every night in the news about Ireland reinforces that. I mean you can see it in a way in South Africa where the ANC (African National Congress) began with a communist set of ideas and Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Then they got independence and big business rules and Nelson Mandela's a saint. And it's not rocket science is it?

So those were … the two points I wanted to make. The third is a question really which is: How do we best honour the memory of the people who fought in 1916 and gave their lives in the independence struggle? And again, I thought that I would've been the first to quote Connolly - (refers to Geoff) you beat me to it but the remark I particularly like is: We cannot conceive of a free Ireland with a subject working class. Well, the working class - if you look at the austerity programme it's certainly subject to the constraints of the economic system - so the working class itself – suffers the bad housing, the poor public services, the unemployment to the casualisation of work - and it's the same as we have here. Now how do we perceive that? What political demands can we make? I think there is.

And I don't know if everyone will agree with this, but I think there is a possibility now with the change in leadership in the Labour Party to make demands of that leadership. I think we know that John McDonald has spoken in support of Irish Republicanism and I think we have to hold him to that now. I think we have to hold the Labour leadership to that. We say: Don't back down, you know?

Let's give our support and demand that the Labour Party speaks out for the Republican struggle in Ireland. And if there is a point when the people of Ireland feel that they are entitled to vote again on whether that country should be united that should get our absolute, one hundred percent support. And interestingly, I think it's in three years time, will be another centenary commemoration which is when the Irish people did vote for independence across the whole of Ireland. And I think it was an overwhelming vote – was it eighty percent? Or eighty-five percent. So there's an anniversary we can look forward to in three years time let's commemorate the one vote that was taken by the whole of Ireland to vote for a united, independent country - that's the one! (big applause)

And of course the other way in which we can show solidarity is to fight along side the people in Ireland against austerity, for homeless, for the common ownership and democratic control of the commanding heights of industry, for the utilities, the defence of public services, the end to privatisation there, the end to subcontracting and for a new economic order. And ending with James Connolly has to be thus: 'The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland and the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.' And we can stand for the cause of labour!

Original article: Ireland's Easter Rising – A Revolutionary Legacy, transcript thanks to The Pensive Quill
Original Video: Bernadette McAliskey and Ken Loach mark Easter 1916 Risingtime stamp begin 28:36

Should drinking water carry a warning 'Contains dangerous chemicals - May damage your health'

March 27, 2016

By Enda Graig

Smoking causes cancer

Cigarettes contain chemicals which, when inhaled in small doses, on a continual basis over an extended period of time dramatically increases your potential of developing life threatening cancer. This is now an accepted medical fact which our Government insists is displayed, in capital letters, on all for sale cigarette packaging. You are given a severe warning concerning the inherent dangers - the rest is up to you.

Trihalomethanes (THMS) causes cancer

Drinking water, which contains THMs, when either ingested or inhaled through steam in small doses on a continual basis over an extended period of time will dramatically increase your potential of developing cancer and other health problems. There is a large body of high-level medical research which now believes this to be true.

This has been happening in the drinking water supplies in seventeen treatment plants throughout Donegal. Greencastle displays the highest reading of THMs of them all in a water analysis test taken in August 2015.

Irish Water and indeed the HSE would have you believe the threat of these chemicals is inconclusive. However, what they don't tell you is that there are recommended limits and these limits have been and continue to be exceeded. In the case of Greencastle it is twice the recommended limit.

Neither Irish Water or the HSE issue any warnings to the public. They categorically refuse stating that trihalomethane exceedance is not a significant health hazard. Unsuspecting public, including the able-bodied, the feeble, children and infants are all consuming the contaminated water.

Similar incident, different response

The response to a similar contamination in Derbyshire, England in March this year was in marked contrast when Severn Trent Water contacted customers to warn them not to drink the tap water due to excess chlorination in the reservoir.

See Daily Mail March 12, 2016 "Hundreds of families still without water a day after chlorine contamination triggered warning to thousands not to drink from taps"

"More than 200 homes in Derbyshire and Leicestershire are still without water a day after locals were warned not to drink, bathe of 'wash their toilets' with it.
Severn Trent Water warned as many as 3,700 customers across the counties not to use their tap water because higher than normal chlorine levels were detected in a reservoir.
It announced today that the 'majority of customers' are now able to use water as normal but 227 properties are still at risk.
Severn Trent said in a statement: 'As our network gets back to normal there may be times when your water supply is interrupted or you have discoloured water. "

Rathmullan Doctor's warning in DonegalDaily

Please read Dr John Carnie's ( Consultant Anesthetist ) article on Rathmullans drinking water supply, in DonegalDaily, Nov 20, 2014

"DOCTOR SAYS TOWN’S WATER SUPPLY IS NOT FIT TO DRINK"

"The retired anaesthetist claims that along with many other homes in Rathmullan, he has been in receipt of hazardous water since 2009 and no remedial action has been undertaken in the last five years.

The main complaint refers to the presence of THMs (Trihalomethanes) in drinking water in the area. Meanwhile the EU Commission says the elimination of all THMs remains a priority for the EPA."