Irish Water: Thousands cancel direct debits amid uncertainty

Ralph Riegel and Paul Melia

Thousands of Irish Water customers have moved to limit their exposure to financial loss in the light of ongoing discussions about the future of water charges.

The Irish Independent has learnt there has been a flood of cancelled direct debits in the last number of weeks as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were embroiled in government formation talks.

Irish Water is refusing to release the exact figures, saying they are not available at this time, but sources have suggested that up to 80pc of all calls involve customer queries over repayments, direct debit cancellations and refunds to their bank accounts.

One source said people were desperate to recoup some of their payments made to date.

"I'd estimate that eight in 10 calls now involve people questioning direct debit cancellations, refunds or how exactly the SEPA banking refund system works," the source said.

"Last year there was significant anger over the bills. But at the moment people just seem to want information about how they can get some of their money back."

Irish Water last night declined to comment on the scale of direct debit cancellations it has faced since the 2016 General Election and the confusion over water charges.

One utility official said it does not comment on "hearsay".

However, the number of payment cancellations is understood to now be running to thousands each week. It is also believed the numbers cancelling have increased amid repeated warnings from major political parties that there is no question of immediate refunds for the 928,000 households who have paid their charges to date.

More than 1.5 million water bills are currently being issued, with some 750,000 expected to be posted or sent electronically over the coming weeks. The bills are being sent because Irish Water is legally obliged to continue to charge for water and wastewater services, and customers are expected to pay under current legislation. New legislation will be enacted after a minority government is formed, which is likely to be next week, after which charges will be formally suspended for at least nine months.

It has also emerged that Irish Water workers and contractors are also seeking emergency meetings with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Independents over the implications of the deal on the suspension of charges on their jobs.

Aside from its directly employed staff, Irish Water's operation provides employment for more than 1,000 contractors both in terms of meter installation and bill processing.

More than 750 specially trained contractors operate with Cork outsourcing firm, Abtran, on handling Irish Water bills and payments. Contractors are also involved in the installation of water meters and various maintenance functions.

Separately, the chair of the Public Water Forum has said that neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael made contact with the group over the agreement struck between both parties in relation to the water charging issue.

Dr Tom Collins, (photo above)  who chairs the forum which is designed to address consumer concerns, said he saw the value of an entity which would advise on best practice. He said in education, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) was tasked with helping to shape policy, and that could be helpful in the water debate.

"They (the parties) didn't talk to the forum," he said. "I could see the value of an organisation in relation to developing proposals for drinking water and wastewater, and not just confined to Irish Water."

Original article:   Irish Independent May 5, 2016

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Waking from the fever dream

Last month I saw a picture, a photograph, that burned down the Potemkin village of American politics that tends to rise in even the most skeptical mind during the fever dream known as the presidential campaign. We all get caught up in it, especially those of us who’ve been following politics for decades, and were marinated for many years in a mainstream perspective. I myself was raised as a “yellow dawg” Democrat in the South. The idea, of course, was that no matter whom the Democrats nominated—even it was a yellow dog—you voted for them. My father—perhaps to his credit?— carried on with this ideal long after almost all of his fellow white rural Southerners had abandoned the Democrats for the dog-whistle racism of the modern Republican Party. I remember well one of his most abiding pieces of political wisdom. It was 1984, and a neighbor of ours—a big, hulking, slightly backward country boy who’d been devoted to my father since their school days—told him: “Chief, I’m thinkin’ about votin’ for Reagan this time. What do you think?” My father leaned against the back of his pickup truck and said in a cool, even tone: “Buford, a man who’d vote for Reagan would eat shit.” Buford nodded his head vigorously. “You right about that, Chief!” (But I’m sure he voted for Reagan anyway.)

Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz,  Berni Sanders and Donald Trump

So I’m well aware that it’s hard not to get caught up in the horse race of the Grand Quadrennial Derby: “Was this a good move for Bernie? Will HRC take a hit from Bill’s gaffe? Is Trump faltering? Will the GOP elites come around to Cruz?” And so and so forth, with the myriad other permutations and speculations that can dazzle the mind—and numb the moral sense—while watching the political circus.

But then something will shake you— or slap you—awake. And so one day I saw a photograph someone tweeted from the Yemen Post. It showed a young girl—12, 14, the age was hard to tell. She was on her hands and knees face down in the dirt, trying to suck water from a hole in a dirty rubber pipe. And in that instant, all the silly, stupid, evil folderol of the campaign circus, all the earnest bunting that adorns the Potemkin village, fell away. I saw the picture, and I knew—once again—this is America in the modern world. This is American foreign policy. This is what it is, this is what it does. This is a war that our Peace Prize-winning president has been conducting with his Saudi allies for more than a year. It’s been responsible for the “excess deaths” of 10,000 children, according to UNICEF. (Let’s repeat that: TEN THOUSAND CHILDREN.) It has driven millions to the brink of famine. It has destroyed schools, hospitals, infrastructure. It has been a gigantic boon for al Qaeda by attacking its deadliest foes in Yemen, the Houthis, and giving it scope to spread.

It is a humanitarian disaster and a moral outrage of the highest order. And yet ... there is no outrage.  There is scarcely any notice, beyond a bare minimum of “marginal” websites and a few stories deeply buried, and stripped of context, in the bowels of the mainstream press. In the past year, a “progressive” administration—whose policies will be continued by either of the Democratic nominees (yes, even Bernie says he wants to see more Saudi militarism in the region)—has been directly complicit in the deaths of TEN THOUSAND CHILDREN. And no one involved in the presidential circus—not the candidates, not the media, not the analysts, not the horse race afficianados—gives the slightest damn. None of them—and nothing in the sinister clownery of his election—deals with the reality of what we are doing in the world. No one will speak of its true, deeply criminal nature—not even the “radical,” “revolutionary” “Democratic Socialist” candidate. So what, in the end, are they really talking about? They’re talking about nothing. They’re talking about bullshit. They’re talking about anything on God’s green earth—or rather, God’s bloodstained, gouged-out, dying earth—but reality.

The reality is a young girl forced to go down on her hands and knees to pry a few drops of water from a broken pipe. She could be your daughter. She could be you. She is a human being who did nothing wrong but be born in a place where a few “progressive” American elites—headed by the Peace Prize-winning president—wanted to play with their head-chopping, womanhating allies to achieve and maintain dominance over the oil lands and their strategic environs. In the end, it comes down to that brief scene in Warren Beatty’s film, “Reds,” where a plump, patriotic bergmeister from Portland calls on Jack Reed to explain “just what this war [WWI] is all about!” Reed rises amongst the tuxedoes and pretty outfits at the gathering and says but a single word: “Profits.” That’s why the Yemeni girl is face down in the dirt, scrambling desperately for water. That’s all it’s about, this “war on terror,” that’s the only thing it’s ever been about: profits. And whoever is elected, that’s not going to change.

Original article: http://www.counterpunch.org/ Vol 23 no 2 Apr 2016

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All hail the new Fianna Gael Alliance

 

The Irish, it seems, are too thick to think about more than one serious issue at a time, writes Gene Kerrigan

Gene Kerrigan

Cartoonist: Tom Halliday

The Fine Gael/Fianna Fail Alliance, after spending two whole months forming a government, is agreed on the continuation of the Irish Water project.

Fianna Fail, being a party of principle, stoutly held to its election promise that it would not enter coalition with Fine Gael. They entered the Alliance instead.

Fianna Fail, being a party of no principle beyond its own advancement, readily agreed to ditch its election promise to "abolish Irish Water".

But, of course, Irish Water doesn't matter any more.

We're all agreed, are we not - the Fianna Gael Alliance, the Independent Alliance, and the officer class of the media - that there are "far more important issues" than Irish Water.

And it's only €3 a week.

They're right - in that most of us can afford €3 a week.

But they're also wrong. The combined actions of FF and FG, with their helpers, have resulted in the spread of low-wage jobs, so that more people than ever don't have a spare €3 at the end of the week.

There are other people who have the €3, but things are so tight that they have to choose carefully how they spend it.

And there are people who could manage the €3 but they figure they've already taken a financial hiding, to save the bankers and the builders.

Ah, but, say the Fianna Gael Alliance fans, surely there are more serious issues?

They're right - and, again, they're wrong.

They're right because the consequences of homelessness, or a chaotic public health service, or property speculation, or untreated mental problems, are far more serious than the consequences of water charges.

But, they're wrong in that we don't have to forget Irish Water in order to be angry at Leo Varadkar diverting millions from mental health resources. We know they have a low regard for us, but we're not nearly as dim as the average backbencher.

Irish Water has been about siphoning money from us, to no good purpose, but the long-term aim has been privatisation.

The protests have been about the money - and they forced FG/Labour to drastically reduce the charges. But they've also been about opposition to selling the water supply to private interests. Few things anger people more than being treated as a fool. And what has angered many, even those who reluctantly coughed up for the water charges, was the brazen way in which the parties tried to take us for a ride.

Where did Irish Water come from? What has been going on? Let's consider what we found out over the past two years.

A cynical Chicago politician laid down a rule: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." He meant that a crisis gives manipulative politicians an opportunity to get away with things that would arouse dissent in normal times.

From the 1980s, the Thatcher revolution spread the gospel of privatisation: transport, water, telecoms - the quality of services declined, as fat cats vanished over the horizon in trucks full of money.

In Ireland, the politicians followed suit where possible, and did so with their usual efficiency. Telecoms - closely followed by the Moriarty Tribunal; bin charges, closely followed by a decline in service. They're working on transport, and making a hash of it.

Privatising water was dicey. No one dared try it on.

Then, the bankers crashed the economy in 2008. And, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

In 2009, Fine Gael invented the notion of Irish Water; in 2010 Fianna Fail ran with it; FG picked up the ball after the 2011 election.

The European Central Bank, working to the same privatisation agenda, pushed things along.

This, of course, is all left-wing paranoia. Until you look at the record. Or try to.

What was discussed at Irish Water's initial meetings? That would be nice to know, but as RTE's This Week programme found out, a rake of meetings took place without the retention of minutes recording what was discussed or decided.

This is not at all usual.

The customary hordes of "consultants" feasted on the easy prey - a pack of cheetahs descending on a virginal gazelle. Around €50m was spent on consultants, we were told, then we got a total of €86m spent on consultants and lawyers.

A nominal €150m was set aside for setting up the company, with a "contingency" fund of another €30m - maybe that was for tea bags and Marietta biscuits in case anyone got peckish at those un-minuted meetings.

Irish Water furiously denied splashing bonuses around to the top staff. The top staff, they said, were given "performance-related rewards".

Half a billion was spent on meters. A vast Irish Water set-up exists to raise the money it costs to run Irish Water.

But, really, privatisation? They wouldn't be so manipulative, would they?

You can't sell a utility paid for out of tax. You must create a "revenue stream" to produce a profit for speculators.

We know that a PwC report commissioned by the Government wrote of "competitive markets in the water sector at a later date". It suggested Irish Water be designed for "the possibility of future retail competition".

We know that Eurostat wrote bluntly, in a letter to the Central Statistics Office, that "privatisation is ultimately envisaged". Outfits like Eurostat are used to calling things as they see them.

The CSO asked for that reference to be removed from the letter.

We know that when Irish Water started writing to us it demanded our PPS numbers: and our home phone numbers, mobile numbers, email addresses and bank account details.

Why did they need all this data? They said it was so they'd know where to deliver the water.

Eh, you've got a goddamn pipe leading to our homes.

They were creating a database that would be a lucrative asset when it came time to privatise Irish Water.

How do we know they would treat our data as an "asset"?

Well, when you ploughed through a difficult-to-read website you found that in a sale of Irish Water our data "will be one of the transferred assets".

Irish Water could transfer or process our data at will, the website said, and "by submitting data to Irish Water, the Customer agrees to this".

When they knew people were ferreting around their site, they took down the stuff about privatisation.

Oh, that old stuff, that was - well, we didn't mean to put that up, that was a mistake. Really.

Spontaneous protest, beyond anything that the Left could organise, sprang up. This forced the politicians to cut the bills, temporarily. The aim is to do whatever it takes to get us on the books, to create that saleable "revenue stream".

Protesters were bad-mouthed as a "sinister fringe". They were compared to Islamic State. Every mistake by any individual - and there were mistakes - was treated as a planned manoeuvre by the whole movement. It was not the media's finest hour.

Already, the politicians who have wreaked havoc on public health, asset-stripped the citizens and presided over soaring rates of suicide, tell us we must stop thinking about Irish Water. And think of serious issues.

As though we're incapable of taking a position on more than one serious issue at a time.

Already, I'm sorry to say - but not surprised - the media has joined in this meme. All hail, it seems, the new Fianna Gael Alliance! There will be fun to be had spotting the odd infight. But the media, I fear, is entering one of its "responsible" periods. As the cringe-making media performance on "government formation" showed, we don't have sources, we have handlers.

Original article: Sunday Independent May 1, 2016

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