Water - where do you stand?

dave ireland wrote: »

We pay for water supply already with tax's

We never paid for electricity, telephone or gas in tax's, we always paid these in a pay for what you use basic, make's no difference if state owned or private owned we always paid just ""once"", separately and nothing to do with tax's

Its not like the bins either, bin collection has fare competition and we can bring our own waste/recycling to a centre ourselves if we so "chose"

We did pay for water supply from our "tax's" (sic), and now we don't. Some of our tax money will go to subsidisation of the utility and the rest will go elsewhere.

Pay for what you use is key here, you've said it yourself. Why should water be any different than electricity or gas?

For Reals wrote: »

Eh, you misread my post. I asked why they didn't run it through, without any meaningful debate, y'know, like IW?

Again... people who equate a utility with the constitution. :facepalm:

Although I'm in favor of water charges from a purely conservation point of view, I'd like to point out that the distinction between general tax expenditure and expenditure on utilities is an unavoidably artificial one.

What is a public utility? A utility is merely a service that is provided for public consumption under the auspices of the State. There is no logical boundary between the provision of water by IW and the provision of healthcare by the HSE and the provision of street lighting by the local authorities and the provision of roads by the NRA. Any claim that there is a clear line distinguishing the provision of these services is false.

The rationale for water charges has to lie in water conservation, with the added bonus that it re-directs central funds to more desirable projects, and allows for external capital funding for the improvement of water.

Any claim that it is only natural to look beyond the central fund in order to pay the cost of running a public utility is readily undermined by the most basic inquiry into that statement.