"Green" policies are destroying this country

I would 100% disagree the construct of Irish Water flawed from the very start as in the scope was all wrong. Starting at the point of metering when clearly the water loss on supply was a bigger problem. A household charge or addition to property tax would have met with much less resistance if indeed it was clear the money was ring fenced for improvements in water supply in the regions collected.

In September Irish water announced a plan to upgrade 21 local sewage treatment plants at a cost of 98 million euros.

500 million plus spent on water metres - then another 100 million plus in consultants for Irish water.

A significant proportion of the population would have no problem contributing to fund better water - that is a totally different outcome to giving money to a quango like Irish water. Questionable recruitment, lacking clear governance and a bonus culture - a quango essentially.

They gave in because they saw that the baying mob was mostly people who voted FF or FG.

People do not want water charges because privatised water is in nobodies interest. Ireland saw what happened when the government charges for waste collection, within a few years, it was privatised

To say 'privatisation was never on the cards' as not true. Any entity capable of capitalising itself and borrowing to fund itself is easy to privatise, and we have seen plenty of privatisation and corruption in that process in ireland in recent decades, as well as plenty of international evidence that privatised water supplies lead to almost universally bad outcomes as private companies fail to deliver safe, affordable and efficient water supplies. The costs of providing water don't go down just because you add an additional costs on top by creating a, metering, billing, customer support, and then the profit margin on top of the existing costs to deliver the service.

The incentive to increase profits does not lead to cleaner and more efficient water supply. It leads to cutting wages, cutting corners and cutting standards

yeah, Ireland are doing practically nothing to address our emissions. There is no excuse. Everything is kicked down the road as it always is

We need global action that has binding commitments with penalties for any country that fails demonstrate that they have taken the appropriate action to meet those commitments, and not just the usual toothless deadline extensions that we've seen for decades

Politicians will bluster and obfuscate for eternity, the only way they will ever be forced to act is if they can be shamed by public outrage, into setting up binding global institutions that have legal powers to enforce penalties on the free riders who don't meet their commitments.

This is why the COP meetings are important, and why public engagement is important, and why we need to stand up to the Fossil Fuel Lobby who 'sponsor' the COP meetings, and who create and distribute the climate change disinformation that has polluted this forum as evidenced by this thread

Irish water failed the minute FG brought Dinny into the mix,

me bollcoks! its a fundamental part of ffg's political and economic ideologies, primarily do everything it takes to try create a fire sector lead and run economy, i.e. privatise everything! which just leads to train wrecks such as our property and health care systems!

FG never cared about the water services here, no party did, until then and it looked like they were going to gift wrap for a friend.

That was what killed it.

The visceral reaction Fg TDs got from their base alone

told them that it was over.

...again, bullsh1t, its clearly obvious that a fundamental part of their ideologies is to create, facilitate and encourage a fire sector lead economy, whos ultimate goal is to privatize as much as possible of public assets, in order to 'maximize utility', and its clearly catastrophically failing! one of the first steps in creating this transition is to create semi-state bodies, to prepare for these outcomes.....

yet it always happened at the end in countries which went similar way

That is absolute nonsense, and their record in that regard says the opposite.

There was a short period of time when a number of semi-States were privatised but that was decades ago.

If it is so clearly obvious and so fundamental, then you will be able to point to which parts of their 2020 manifestos included the privatisation proposals.

Water charges were defeated for a number of reasons, not the least the small matter of privatisation. Something even Eurostat questioned with Irelands proposal to have water services "off the book", yet here we are years later and still no sign of the promised referendum.

If you were a bit of a cynic, especially with all the "good friends" that had their noses in the water charges trough, you could be excused for thinking that a referendum on water would really not suit such "good friends". You might even be excused for asking where government legislation and large slices of taxpayers money are flying around how viable some of these aims are and who benefits financially.

A reasonable person would conclude that if you are correct in it not being possible to word a referendum, then surely our government`s brightest and finest legal minds knew this and simply lied in an effort to get water charges excepted where at any time in the future the stroke of a Minister`s pen could help out an "old friend". It would be extremely difficult to even attempt calling that a conspiracy theory when we see the shenanigans that went on with Irish Water and "old friends"

As I said blanch, when government legislation and taxpayers money is flying around freely, following the money is always a good idea as to who is going to gain the most.

This would make some sense if a) oil was cheap and b) we had an economy that's heavily reliant on energy inputs. However, manufacturing is pretty small in Ireland compared to other economies - we make most of our money from the knowledge economy, and some high-value, small volume manufaturing like medical devices and pharma.

Even if it was the case that our economy is at a disadvantage compared to folks burning fossil fuels - what's the upside of having a marginally healthier economy as the world enters a period of massive human suffering, war, mass migration, famine etc.? Like, yipee.

Global warming does not just mean rising sea levels and more extreme weather. It means something close to civilisational collapse.

Oil is cheap. Turning intermittent, diffuse renewable energy sources into reliable, usable power - now that's expensive.

Your standard of living - your very existence in fact - is dependent on oil, and on other sources of abundant, cheap, concentrated energy.

If and when we're forced to abandon that, you'll see what a real civilisational collapse looks like.