Is Irish Water the greatest fraud inflicted on Irish citizens?

I believe that the establishment of Irish Water will turn out to be the greatest fraud inflicted on the Irish people since independence.

I suspect that Irish Water has already been sold to private business. There are a number of signals that seem to point to this, which I’ll come back to later.

I strongly suspect that there are forces working behind the scenes, with the Government’s full support, who are pushing an already agreed but secret agenda.

I strongly suspect that today’s bizarre incident where unasked for legal advice was thrown at the Public Accounts Committee warning them that they have no legal right to question Irish Water CEO John Tierney is part of this secret agenda.

I strongly suspect that business interests, who have powerful politicians in their pockets, are calling the shots.

I strongly suspect that senior ministers and even the Taoiseach are receiving direct orders from these business interests directing them in how they should respond to the people’s opposition to water charges.

4 thoughts on “Is Irish Water the greatest fraud inflicted on Irish citizens?”

  1. Agreed. At best, it’s a slow-motion heist.

    Irish people should be made aware of the activities of mega-banks and corporations who view water as the ‘oil of the 21st century’. The media here is seriously letting us down by not raising the wider international context in which the decisions around Irish Water and its future are being made.

    For example, given how effective the Revenue Commissioners were in collecting the property tax you’d think the Government would replicate this proven model, at a massively reduced cost, leveraging the same property database technology used to calculate property tax liabilities and without any additional risks to data privacy (Revcomms have our PPSN’s already). It would ensure an effective collection process based on prior experience *and* if nothing, it would deflect attention entirely from the government parties, in the lead-in to the general election. The Revenue would be the big bad wolf – not Fine Gael/Labour.

    It would have taken a lot for an alternative strategy to that outlined above to be considered – much less pursued.

    So what made them do it?

    What, indeed.

    The answer can be gleaned from the vocabulary used by politicians who seem intent on referring to the new levy as a ‘charge’ as distinct to a ‘tax’. Therein lies the biggest clue as to the ultimate destiny of Irish Water. If it were a ‘tax’, then the Revenue Commissioners would be collecting it. But privatized enterprises operating in the private sector don’t collected taxes……they can only collect charges. The strict insistence upon this distinction by government ministers in their utterances proves their complicity in the matter. At this point, they must do more than ‘promise’ that Irish Water won’t be privatised – trust has been too far eroded amongst the electorate. At this point we need a referendum which ensures it won’t happen.

    “Today, on Earth, over a billion people have no access to clean, fresh water. In wealthy industrial and post-industrial nations, consumers unwittingly use massive water resources with every purchase they make, such as the 650 gallons necessary to produce a typical cotton t-shirt, or the 139 gallons of water to prepare a single 16-ounce cup of fancy logo coffee. Producing a pound of beef in industrial ranching requires over 2-thousand gallons of water.”
    (Greenpeace 2014)

    If in any doubt as to the intended ultimate destiny of Irish Water look no further than the article below, which sets out the ambitions and activities of Wall Street banks and large corporations wrt to the ownership of water around the world.

    (Btw if we are going to privatize our water let’s do it properly… let’s invite one of the UK or German banks we bailed out to come back and buy our water – now wouldn’t that be a nice way to let off some steam)

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274

    JRHunt

  2. Even bigger than the blanket bank guarantee Anthony?
    I believe every nearly word of your above piece applies to that pre-agreed stitch-up inflicted on the Irish people on 29th Sept 2008. The core European banks recklessly built up a €64 Billion exposure to Irish banks which financed our property bubble.
    Does anyone actually believe the bullshit story from Lenihan that he signed the guarantee on the basis of taking the bankers at their word regarding the figures/losses they presented to him that night?
    This catastrophe was obviously agreed SIX MONTHS earlier in March 2008 when the banks share price collapsed , most likely under threat from the ECB. Trichet repeated this bullying tactic in Nov 2010 to coerce us to pay unsecured bondholders. In 2011, Trichet coerced us for a third time with his “bomb will go off in Dublin not in Frankfurt” threat re: bondholders.
    Crime of the century.

  3. The same corporate interests that want one big European marketplace with no bothersome tariffs or border controls paying European prices for goods made in asia. The same corporate interests who pay a fraction of the corporation tax whilst the peasants get hammered. The same corporate interests that were on the direct hotline to Enda Kenny when a transaction tax of 0.1% was proposed.

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