**ALL THINGS IRISH WATER/WATER RELATED** Part 2 - MOD WARNING IN OP

Some will say I've snapped, others............ Who knows, I'm not sure I actually care any more. I'm tempted to find a piece of chain and connect myself to the gates in Dawson Street, but I'm not sure that it would actually make a difference.

The following is going out in my next E-mail run,

Dear Taoiseach

I was planning to write to you in relation to the issues that are being raised and discussed in just about every forum and meeting place regarding Irish Water.

My original stance was that I felt it was completely appropriate to have a state body that will recover the costs involved in providing water and treating waste water, and that metering was the best way to encourage conservation and I have been defending that stance on places like boards.ie, as my father was responsible for the management of a large waste water system for a city of 100,000 in the UK for over 40 years, so I acccumulated a considerable knowledge of the subject over time..

That was before I started looking at the way in which YOU, and your colleagues have allowed Irish Water to set up their operation. I was already unhappy with the ethos and culture of Irish Water, their focus and methods are completely inappropriate to a new company that has not yet really started trading or operating, but then, In the last few hours, I have been made aware that there are at least 3 "retired" county managers now working in full time management roles in Irish Water, and that has changed my thinking and attitude towards the whole thing..

I will keep this simple. Please consider your position, and that of your Government. You have so fundamentally reneged on the promises you made in your 2011 manifesto, I am now in the position where it is impossible for me to consider continuing to support Fine Gael unless there is a fundamental and far reaching restructuring of the party, and the people that are leading that party, and the deception and cronyism that is clear in the Irish Water situation leaves me with no option but to ask you to resign and call a general election at an early date.

To give you an idea of the disgust and contempt I feel towards the Irish Political system, I will tell you that despite being British, I am seriously considering that a vote for Sinn Fein will be my only way to positively express the absolute loathing I have for the mainline political system that is accepted as the norm in Ireland.

My political leaning would be centre right, but there is no way that I can vote for either of the main line political parties with a clear conscience, both FF and FG are so disconnected from the people that they are supposed to be serving, a vote for either of them would serve only to allow and legitimise the continuance of the present unacceptable situation, and I am no longer prepared to tolerate the regular insults that are being heaped on the heads of the people of Ireland by the people that are supposed to be representing us and acting with our best interests at heart,

Why am I so angry? Very simple. Irish Water has been stuffed full of retired semi state managers who have "retired" from Local authorities, with a considerably less than acceptable track record, on obscene pensions, and they have now been employed by Irish Water on even more obscene pay rates, which I find completely and utterly offensive and unacceptable.

I am happy to pay a reasonable charge for potable water, and for the work that is needed to enhance the system for the future, but there is NO WAY that I will pay for the slush fund of failed semi state managers who are already getting obscene pensions, they are the wrong people, with the wrong skills, in the wrong place, and the fact that you have allowed that to happen makes it even more damnable given your previous stance on these issues.

You very specifically promised that you would deal with the corruption, cronyism and inappropriate expenses and allowances culture, but instead, you have created an untouchable super quango that is stuffed full of semi state blow in managers from other areas of the state Golden Circle, at even higher pay rates than they were getting.

I find that both reprehensible and offensive, and completely inappropriate to the serious job that Irish Water are supposed to be carrying out, given that one of the reasons for setting up IW was because ot the failures of the local authorities to deliver an acceptable system and service

I'm struggling to even survive as a result of the mistakes and misleading information that was put into the public domain by Bertie Ahern and his cronies, which we made the mistake of believing, and instead of shutting down a good business that was feeling the pressure of the "supposedly short recession", and limiting our losses, we put more in, and lost it all, and more when the "short recession" turned out to be the worst in the history of the state. We have never recovered from that trauma, and the harsh reality is that we probably never will, given the scale of the debts we ended up with, and the massive losses in value on the one thing we own, our property..We are both of an age where finding acceptable employment has proved impossible, so our outlook on retirement is looking very bleak indeed, as it's very clear that in the medium to long term, all of our energy bills and our services bills for property tax, bins and water are only going to go in one direction.

As if that wasn't enough, as a direct result of the mis management and corrupt practices in Meath County Council over a long period of time, I have a house built in 1990 that I can't sell because it was built too low, and on a flood plain. To try and improve a bad situation, I have been trying to get Meath County council to remove a sewer pipe that runs over a stream close to us, as it was a contributory cause in €120,000 damage from overflowing sewers that flooded my property in 2002, but 12 years later, I am still trying to get an acceptable response from Meath, the OPW ( who also are involved) don't respond to E-mail messages, and having sent an E-mail to Irish Water on this subject nearly a month ago, I am still waiting for "the local representative" to make contact with me.

I have seen at first hand the sort of work practices that are deemed acceptable and normal in semi state bodies, as an external contractor, I was responsible for a long term project sorting out major problems that meant a new computer system was unusable in some areas as a result of the incompetence of the management, and the problems regarding the house here have meant that I have spent a significant amount of time trying to engage with people in Meath County Council and the Office of Public Works, but that has not produced any worthwhile results.

When you were first elected, I hoped that you were going to deliver on some of the promises that you made. but I am bitterly dissapointed that in the areas relating to the overhaul of politics and the state services, not only have you failed completely to deliver on your promises, but you have made it worse by allowing and apparently encouraging even more of the nepotism and cronyism that you were supposedly going to bring to an end.

Bluntly, you, your ministers and the government are out of touch with the reality that is life for the ordinary citizen. We don't enjoy the same life style that you and your colleagues appear to enjoy, and the disconnect between the political elite and the ordinary citizens of this country is becoming wider with every week that passes, and it seems that you are completely oblivious of the problems that the ordinary citizen is facing.

We don't get to do the ordinary things we used to, the decisions now are about if we will have hot water for a shower, or heating for an hour in the evening, because we can't afford to have both, and the thought of being made to contribute even more to the pay and pension pot of the people at the top of Irish Water is making my blood boil, because my experience of trying to engage with such people is that they are not worth the money they are being paid, because they are manifestly failing to deliver, and should not be in the positions that they are. The top people at IW are earning nearly €5000 a week, they will get more in a month that we will have coming into this house for the entire YEAR., that is the degree of disconnect that now exists across this state.

We won't get any help with our water bills, I'm not earning enough to be paying tax, and the limited benefits we get don't include the packages that will be enhanced to provide extra money towards the water charge, so our choice is that we will see our grandchildren in Co Clare even less often.

If we are lucky, and nothing goes wrong, we get down to Clare once every 3 or 4 months, that's going to be down to once or twice a year now, depending on what the eventual water charge actually ends up as.

So, to sum it up, right now, I am beyond angry, because I feel that having trusted Fine Gael to carry out the promises you made in 2011 regarding the state of politics in Ireland, I find that you have coldly and cynically set up a super quango full of the political elite, done a quiet and almost secret deal with the unions to ensure continued employment for people that there's no work for, and allowed a massive,bloated and inappropriate structure complete with an inappropriate "entitlement" bonus ,allowances and expenses culture without any regard for the people that will have to pay for that structure, and now that large numbers of people are rising up and saying that your plans are inappropriate and unacceptable, you and your ministers are becoming increasingly arrogant and dismissive of the legitimate and appropriate complaints of the people that you were elected to represent.

Last weekend, I didn't join the march in Ashbourne because there were groups in that march that didn't represent the opinions I wanted to express.

However, if there are more marches in the coming weeks, even if SF etc are there, I WILL be participating, in order to make sure that you get the very clear message about the degree of contempt I now feel towards you and your Government

I hope my feeling are clear, you have left me with no other option than to ask you to give serious and urgent consideration to resigning and calling an early general election, so that the people can express their views on the present state of the country. .

Yours Sincerely