Water charges revisited?

Sheeps

They should be funding it with council money raised through all the extra funds they'll be getting from local property tax this time around. That's what the property tax is for.

Good loser

Quin_Dub wrote: »

To be fair , there were lots of reasons why FG/Labour got cleaned out at the last Election however Water charges was not one of them.

At the time only something in the order of 10% of voters stated that Water Charges were a key factor in their voting choices.

Correct except on one point - the figure was 3%, not 10%.

Good loser

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

It would not, because then you would be faced with the problem that urban dwellers were subsidising others via property tax.

There is also the conundrum of annual subsidies paid by way of grants that the private payers receive.

Lastly, they're all treated equally regardless.

Constantly whinging on here, (always in the small hours) about people paying privately for water, and how everyone should be treated equally is laughable.

Everyone in the state is treated equally, the public mains was paid for and maintained by the state, and is there for any citizen to avail of.

There is nothing stopping you upping sticks, and moving into a house connected to the public mains, and being treated equally to everyone and anyone else on it.

Just the same as public beaches in Kerry are free to be enjoyed by those in Kerry, or those in Monaghan.

Johnny, whatever brought you to the absurd conclusion that my house is not connected to the mains?

Good loser

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I'm not positive, but I do believe that it is arguable that it satisfies the "polluter pays principle" aspect of the WFD at least.

The 213,000l.p.a. is IIRC an average usage amount based on the average household which the government is paying for to Irish Water. Use above that will be charged directly to the consumer.

It's not too far off the original model which satisfied the WFD.


It certainly would be arguable!

EDIT: Sorry didn't see the "would it succeed" part. No I don't think it would be successful because the case law affords the right to the State to make exceptiosn based on public policy, land use, etc. their argument would be that (i) they're unable to supply mains water to the entire country (ii) local water schemes are subsidized and probably (iii) one can't divide up (necessarily) the portion of tax that goes specifically to provision of water to / removal from domestic premises (i.e. that Irish Water does a lot of other things).

As an aside, are septic tanks subsidized?

Thanks F S.


I would think 8% would be much too low to satisfy them. We'll see in due course.


Regarding (ii) those schemes are, I believe, subsidized only as to capital and probably only half the private supply comes from such schemes.


I think septic tanks are subsidized if one upgrades before inspection but if one fails an inspection there is no subsidy for upgrading.

Good loser

Johnny Dogs wrote: »

Oh dear, there's so much wrong in this post, its hard to know where to start.

First of....


You maybe missed the various posts where I state that the idea of charging people who waste water an being a good idea, so you can cut with this nonsense.

In fact, I repeated my thoughts just a few posts above.




And then this.


Can you link me to any source, anywhere that says Irish people are wasteful towards water?

Did it not emerge that in fact , we're actually amongst the lowest consumers of water in the EC, despite not directly charged for it?

Did I not rag just this week that Irish water praised the public for heeding their pleas to conserve water in this current heat wave? (Despite it being "free")

You keep harping on about paying privately for water, yet I remind you that people paying privately get annual subsidy grants to help fund it.

If you're feeling a bit aggrieved at paying for water, may I suggest getting yourself a home in an urban area, but be prepared to lose a lot of quietness and serenity, possibly some privacy too.

Oh, and also, you will have to deal with a much higher lpt, because a portion of it will be going to subsidise the rural dwellers, many of whom have private water supplies.

It's swings and roundabouts Bar.

You're chancing your arm again Johnny, aren't you?

Good loser

Edward M wrote: »

That's the simple suggestion I suppose.
But looking logically its not the case.
What you are suggesting is that the govt does nothing for the public unless there's something in it for them or their crony's.
We have many crises, we've been and are continuing to discuss them, do you think there's enough money in the kitty to fix them all other than the govt can't see any advantage for them or crony's to fix these problems?
I think personally that if it was that easy to fix the problems we have, that given the votes involved, any govt would just do it.

Matt's a conspiracist plain and simple.


He can even see around corners!

Hitman3000

Good loser wrote:

You're chancing your arm again Johnny, aren't you?

He's not actually, Selfbuild. ie has information on grants to group water schemes and single dwellings.

Good loser

Hitman3000 wrote: »

He's not actually, Selfbuild. ie has information on grants to group water schemes and single dwellings.

He is actually. There are no annual subsidy grants.

Good loser

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Cut the nonsense.
Money from general taxation goes to water. A charge for water would go towards water, (at some point possibly).
Can you stop fudging? There's a difference between paying a second time and stating because it's not fully funded you're not really paying at all.
This is the state you have issue with. If a landlord asks you for rent and you pay it, you just paid rent, even if the landlord toddles off and spends it on the horses rather than his mortgage.

Landlord: You owe me 2000 for rent. Now the rent covers your use of the house, including the garden, gutters, mail box etc.
Tenant: Here you go chief.
Landlord: I need to charge you for the gutters. House needs new gutters. It'll be an ongoing gutter charge.
Tenant: Shouldn't that come out of the rent?
Landlord: Well the last landlord didn't look after the gutters and now they are in a terrible state. There's no magic money tree y'know.
Tenant: But I already pay for gutters?
Landlord: Who are you, ISIS?

This 'paying twice' stuff is/was utter nonsense. This was an 'argument' from the early days before IW was formed. Each and every move then by IW/Govt was added to an ever growing list of 'reasons' (all spurious) as the months went by.


Your little example is specious.
How about this?
Landlord says to tenant you have lived rent free in my house for x years and now I want you to pay €500 per annum.
The house corresponding to the supply of water.


A better example might be

Bank provides me with an overdraft facility - free for many years.
And then introduces a charge of €x per 3 months.

Hitman3000

Good loser wrote:

He is actually. There are no annual subsidy grants.

There is, housing.gov.ie.

McMurphy

Good loser wrote: »

Johnny, whatever brought you to the absurd conclusion that my house is not connected to the mains?

I didn't, my post was generic.

Good loser wrote: »

You're chancing your arm again Johnny, aren't you?

Not at all, but yet again you're letting your self down by your lack of knowledge and research on a subject you post so much about.

An annual subsidy is available for the running costs of the group water scheme. This must be approved by the local authority. The amount of subsidy is 100% of the qualifying expenditure up to the following limits:

€70 for each house supplied from a from a local authority source (public mains)
€140 for each house supplied from a private source (such as a private well)
Where a group scheme has provided its own water treatment plant under a Design, Build, Operate (DBO) contract, a new subsidy will be paid to cover the full production cost of treated water for domestic use.

source

In fact, it was actually hot news quite recently.

Minister Murphy announces increased supports for rural water services

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy, T.D., has today 15 December, 2017 announced a range of measures aimed at improving rural water services. The changes will come into effect from January 1st 2018. The Minister said that the package of measures will bring greater equity and fairness for rural water users and will ensure that domestic members of group water schemes get comparable benefits to those being served by the public supply through Irish Water. In addition to the increased subsidies, the Minister announced a review of wider investment needs of rural water services, which is to commence in early 2018.

Looks like the rural dwellers might be so engrossed on whinging online about the gross unfairness of having private schemes, they are unaware of the equity measures going on.

Reminds me in the "old man waves fist at cloud" meme tbh.

aido79

tayto lover wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that the Water Charges didn't come before the Property Tax. If it had we would have paid for water and protested and blocked the Property Tax. Only one of them was going to go through because the working man was suffering by only getting approx half of what he earned. He had had enough.

Only people who own property pay property tax so not really a fair way of doing it. People with private wells pay property tax and don't use Irish water's services.
Nobody unless they are earning over €600,000 is paying half their wages in tax. A person on €100,000 pays around 39% of their wages in tax.

facehugger99

tayto lover wrote: »

It's just unfortunate that the Water Charges didn't come before the Property Tax. If it had we would have paid for water and protested and blocked the Property Tax. Only one of them was going to go through because the working man was suffering by only getting approx half of what he earned. He had had enough.

I think the 'non-working' man was always the more vociferous of the protest element.

McMurphy

facehugger99 wrote: »

I think the 'non-working' man was always the more vociferous of the protest element.

The "non working man" wouldn't be considered a traditional FG voter.

Why do you think FG bucked and bent to satisfy people who would never vote for them?

That's a silly comment tbh.

dense

facehugger99 wrote: »

I think the 'non-working' man was always the more vociferous of the protest element.

You mean it was they who were most likely to be chanting "Peaceful protest"?


I'd agree.

Grab All Association

€168 million of unpaid water rates from businesses throughout the country.

That’s € 1 6 8 , 0 0 0, 0 0 0

The local authorities were never at this scale of incompetence.

Source Sunday Business Post

Paywall

GreeBo

Grab All Association wrote: »

€168 million of unpaid water rates from businesses throughout the country.

That’s € 1 6 8 , 0 0 0, 0 0 0

The local authorities were never at this scale of incompetence.

Source Sunday Business Post

Paywall

Do you have the figures that back up your assertion?

dense

Grab All Association wrote: »

€168 million of unpaid water rates from businesses throughout the country.

That’s € 1 6 8 , 0 0 0, 0 0 0

The local authorities were never at this scale of incompetence.

Source Sunday Business Post

Paywall

IW inherited €156,000,000 in unpaid water rates from local authorities.



https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/councils-owed-at-least-156m-in-water-levies-258962.html

Cookie_Monster

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I don't feel I should have to point it out at this stage, but apparently I do: We don't just drink rainwater.

I do Straight off the roof into a tank.

It would also be a stupidly easy option to implement for hundreds of thousand of households tbh as another way to allow for usage. Roof collection, slimline 3-5k litre tanks and some filters.
Should be manditory on all new build to have some form of roof collection, storage and usage systems tbh.

Don't get me wrong, i fully support water charges and proper investment in infrastructure but in tandem with the above.

McMurphy

blanch152 wrote: »

Have you really thought through what you are saying here.

Ditto.

FG implemented a change in their policy by increasing the threshold. They did so because they had no option as they were a minority government and FF, SF, PBP and many independents told them that they should.

Just coming back to this one.

You're clearly confused, because so far as I recall, the threshold debacles were raised/lowered/adjusted by FG while they were in govt with labour.

Far from being a minority govt, they had the seats to railroad legislation in with little or no debate.

So FG are to blame for following the bad advice and ridiculous policies of the other parties, but you are absolving the other parties of responsibility for the ridiculous policies?

Come off it, that is the ultimate cop-out. FG did what the others wanted, so FG are to blame for it not being right. Seriously?

See above, this blame everyone and anyone else Craic is getting very tiresome.

FreudianSlippers

dense wrote: »

Yes OK, it may have been one of those figures that was just floated at some stage.


The point I was making is that the €5.5bn investment to run from 14 to 21 was announced on the back of a charging regime and the lack of charges has not affected that.


Here is an engineer speaking in 2015 about the need for political will to ensure that investment would occur.





Sounds like it'll solve all our problems.



I hope he will now congratulate the politicians on their will to implement this amazing plan without charges.


https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/irish-water-we-need-political-consensus-to-implement-5-5bn-water-services-plan-1.2293666?mode=amp

Let's just point out that the crux of the issue is that Irish Water is unable to borrow off the State's books as a result of the massive roll-back.

Regardless of the level of investment provided, it's billions of Euro on the books that could have been spent elsewhere.

FreudianSlippers

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

I do Straight off the roof into a tank.

It would also be a stupidly easy option to implement for hundreds of thousand of households tbh as another way to allow for usage. Roof collection, slimline 3-5k litre tanks and some filters.
Should be manditory on all new build to have some form of roof collection, storage and usage systems tbh.

Don't get me wrong, i fully support water charges and proper investment in infrastructure but in tandem with the above.

I totally agree with using rainwater for gardening, toilets, etc. and re-using greywater... but I've genuinely never heard of a rainwater system which can be filtered to an extent that it's safe to drink.

Cookie_Monster

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I totally agree with using rainwater for gardening, toilets, etc. and re-using greywater... but I've genuinely never heard of a rainwater system which can be filtered to an extent that it's safe to drink.

Really? Standard practice over here (NZ) outside of town supplies. Carbon media filter and a UV one too. Better standard than mains supply, no chlorine etc.
Is it not stardard off mains in Ireland? How else do you get water than without needing to drill a well?

dense

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Let's just point out that the crux of the issue is that Irish Water is unable to borrow off the State's books as a result of the massive roll-back.

Populist parties do massive rollbacks!
They really didn't think the whole venture through.

Can't understand why they rolled over seeing as according to another poster just 3% of the electorate had water charges on their mind at the last election.

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Regardless of the level of investment provided, it's billions of Euro on the books that could have been spent elsewhere.

Its not free money billions.

There is no golden goose.
No matter where it comes from someone will have to pay it.
It's not going to be paid by those on SW, OAPs for example because there will be soft clauses and allowances, or those in the public sector all of whom take from the exchequer which is funded not by public sector teachers and other workers, it's going to be predominantly paid by private sector PAYE workers.

So there is no great difference, in fact it should be cheap for the exchequer to borrow than a utility.

It made me laugh listening to those on SW saying their VAT was paying for water.

Their VAT from cash they were spending given to them to spend by those working.

Hitman3000

dense wrote:

Can't understand why they rolled over seeing as according to another poster just 3% of the electorate had water charges on their mind at the last election.

An exit poll found it was an issue for 10% at the last GE.

Hitman3000

Hitman3000 wrote: »

An exit poll found it was an issue for 10% at the last GE.

In Paul Murphy’s constituency maybe, but nationwide 3%

Idbatterim

“It made me laugh listening to those on SW saying their VAT was paying for water.

Their VAT from cash they were spending given to them to spend by those working.” Yeah, sure kids can claim they are taxpayers too, with the free money they are given by their parents and then spend it on services or products subject to vat ...

Hitman3000

Well MA a poster called Fruedin Slippers claimed it was 10% and he never mentioned Murphy's local. Maybe if it's 3% you can provide a linky to the figure. Although I do remember IW stated over a third of households had not engaged by the time charges was suspended.

charlie14

Idbatterim wrote: »

“It made me laugh listening to those on SW saying their VAT was paying for water.

Their VAT from cash they were spending given to them to spend by those working.” Yeah, sure kids can claim they are taxpayers too, with the free money they are given by their parents and then spend it on services or products subject to vat ...

Coming across this thread didn`t just make me laugh.
It reminded me of two bald men fighting over a comb seeing all the same pro water charges posters from the old mega threads even at this stage still clinging desperately to the same old hackneyed arguments.
Get over it folks and move on, water charges are gone.
None of you will see them re-introduced in your lifetimes.


If there are some of you that have nothing better to be doing with your lives than flogging a dead horse and reply to this post have at it.

As someone that has better for doing I will not be engaging.

James Brown

GreeBo wrote: »

Your argument makes no sense.
You are not paying twice.
If your dinner costs €50, paying €20 in cash and €20 by card still didn't cover the cost and you are still not paying twice.

Sorry, no. Not at all.

Your analogy is wrong. It would work if the waiter told you the bill for the meal was €20, gave you a receipt and then billed you an additional 30 for using knives and forks.

You are asked to pay tax for covering numerous things, including water supply. Any shortfall is the states bad house keeping, unless you dodge tax, you are paying for water.