Water ownership...It hasn't gone away you know.

Captain Obvious wrote: »

If it's so simple what is the amendment you would introduce?





The idea that the potential consequences of poor wording should be ignored is more so. It's nothing to do with PR. Is that really your only answer to legal arguments? Insults and conspiracy?

The insults are beginning to fly as the argument for a constitutional amendment falters in face of the difficulties of actually constructing an amendment.

charlie14 wrote: »

What purpose do you believe will be served by asking internet randomers to word a constitutional amendment other than to attempt to make a point that it cannot be done ?
.

Well, that is exactly the point. Those internet randomers don't have copies of amendments proposed by Sinn Fein, PBP, FF or any of those other populist political parties supposedly clamouring for a constitutional amendment. The point is exactly this - there is no sensible straightforward amendment out there.

That means one thing - we are rerunning the 8th amendment. We would be putting something into the Constitution that we don't know how the courts will interpret. One lame attempt contained the words "beholden to" that I have struggled to find any coherent legal meaning for. This is a clear case of the "emperor has no clothes".

charlie14 wrote: »

Aside from the fact that all the past points you made on the certainty of Irish Water continuing on its merry way burying yet more taxpayer money underground, looking after the lads and collecting domestic water metered charges unhindered for ever and a day being so wildly off the mark, would you not be better off with your seemingly expert understanding of constitutional amendments advising Séamus Woulfe ?

After all he is the Attorney General tasked by this government on their commitment to introduce an amendment to ensure the public water supply is never privatised.

Well lookee here, the last I checked Irish Water was still here and is definitely going nowhere, water charges are returning under the guise of excessive usage charges and I never defended looking after the lads, so I was right on the two things you have correctly identified me as standing for.

I don't make a habit of looking into poster's past pronouncements, but I suspect if I looked deeply enough I would find you would have shared company with those who predicted the demise of Irish Water, a company that is still with us.

As for Seamus Wolfe, there was a commitment in the Confidence and Supply Agreement, put in by the weaselly populist FF party, for a constitutional amendment, if Mr. Wolfe had a bright idea as to how it would work, I am sure that we would have heard about it by now.

The facts are that framing a constitutional amendment to calm the ignorant mob is quite a hard thing to do. If we see an amendment published, it certainly won't be like any of those suggested here, and I suspect that if it is to prevent the nationalisation of farmers wells, then it won't go far enough for the conspiracy theorists on here.

Edward M wrote: »

Why would you want to separate it?
The only reason I can see is to privatise it..
But that's not the point, the point I'm making is that it's not impossible to word it.
The only reason not to do it is to leave the door open to privatisation, which some people are pushing for.

If it isn't impossible to word it, why are all of the attempts on this thread failing so dismally?

blanch152 wrote: »

(1) Change the name of the company and the constitutional amendment no longer applies.
(2) What are the company going to do with infrastructure they no longer need because it is no longer functioning. Water treatment plans that are due to be decommissioned can't be sold.


Next wording please.

It also doesn't allow Irish Water to hire any outside company to build infrastructure on their behalf.

Constitutionally nationalising Irish Water is also the dumbest thing any country I can think of has put in their Constitution.

168 posts and, as far as I can see, no logical reason we would want to prevent a "private company" providing water services on behalf of the State (who, let's remember has been pretty poor at doing so to date).

charlie14 wrote: »

Irish Water was never going anywhere. At least not in the grandiose manner you and others had assured us it would be for ever and a day.

The poor bedraggled thing is with us but like an old toothless cat in the corner. no threat to even mice. To paraphrase your own analogy now that it has been exposed for what it was, "the emperor has no clothes"



Practically ever prophesy you have made in the past with such certainty to the glorious future of water charges and metering have been shown either incorrect or nothing other than smoke and mirrors. If only for those alone I hope you will excuse me if your latest attempt to resurrect, as Michael Noonan so eloquently phrased it, "the dead cat on the pitch" if I look on your latest efforts as just more of the same.



It would save both of us some time if you were to actually read replies. I have already pointed out to you that the "free allowance" for domestic households before Irish Water had its cough softened was 30,000 liters per annum. It is now 213,000 liters per annum. Water charges for excessive use are not coming back for any household that is not filling swimming pools or watering vast acreage of manicured lawns.


One of the FF conditions on supporting FG with a Confidence and Supply Agreement was the acceptance of the recommendations of an independently chaired Oireachtas Committee on water charges. FG were quite free and entitled to refuse, but they did not. One of those recommendations was the drafting of a constitutional amendment to be put to the people that public water supplies would never be privatised. That is not going to magically disappear regardless of how much you might wish it too, so perhaps you should just get over it and look for other windmills to tilt at.


Btw, what is this fascination with Sinn Féin where you somehow have this compulsion of attempting to bring them into any thread you post in

Irish Water - check.
Water charges for excessive usage - check.

Exactly what I predicted. If you did actually read back carefully, there were posters predicting the demise and dismantling of Irish Water. I said that was never going to happen and that a single utility was here to stay. Proven completely correct in all of that. I also said that some form of usage charging was necessary for compliance with the WFD. And that is what we have. Proven correct on that one too.

Quite simply, a single utility is here to stay. Charges for usage are now enshrined and they will creep in further as the years go by.


I don't understand your bizarre reference to SF. On this thread, I have been criticial of both FF (weaselly populist) and FG (weak, afraid, climate change) and hardly mentioned SF. As with most political debates in Ireland on important issues, they are largely irrelevant.

Baron de Charlus wrote: »

No harm in adding braces if you already have a belt? :pac:

I mean, it could be.

Say someone wanted to open a big desalination plant somewhere to address water supply issues in the future; State agrees to sell ocean water to the company to desalinate and then sell back to the State as clean water - fundamentally impossible under the proposed Constitutional amendment... the State would have to buy this company (oh wait they can't do that)... the State would have to open their own desalination plant (oh wait, no money to do that; perhaps the State doesn't have the technology of this company)... the State then gets that technology somehow and decides to build their own plant (oops. just broke state aid rules).

This idea is no less daft than the idea a few years ago to nationalise the Dell factory in Limerick. The idea of and practice of temporarily "selling" assets and commodities to private parties is a common part of the modern world and no amount of wishy thinking by those advocating this Constitutional amendment is going to change the hard cold facts of the world... the main one being that Ireland is awful at providing water services.

Edward M wrote: »

How about, The company, Irish water and all the infrastructure it owns and the service it supplies and any infrastructure and any service it adds to the existing water supply and waste water treatment system shall be owned by the state and shall not be sold off to any private person or consortium.

Oh wait... I just remembered that this already doesn't work, as Irish Water is a private company and the Minister is the sole shareholder.

Podge_irl wrote: »

Surely 10.3 gives them the right to privatise it?




This is not an argument in favour of an amendment, I think its a phenomenally silly idea, just curious about the current status.

The key word there is "management".

EDIT: sorry was in the middle of something and didn't get to extrapolate on this. The point is that the government is and should be free to allow for any party to manage supply of water so long as the underlying commodity cannot be sold. As it stands, the Government uses this Art 10.3 to allow Irish Water (a private company) to manage water supply on behalf of the State. This is a vitally important thing to allow in the Constitution.
It also makes sense not to extend this to infrastructure, because the State frequently needs private companies (Irish Water or otherwise) to temporarily own infrastructure when it's being built and then on completion the State takes ownership of that.

pearcider wrote: »

Dismissing the control of our nations supply of water as a resource as merely the “trend of the day” is disengenuous in the extreme. Like pretty much all your posts in this thread.

Except literally nobody is suggesting this.

Not the most subtle slippery slope!

pearcider wrote: »

The Constitution is there to stop the government over reaching and oppressing the population.

Anyone with a fair knowledge of Constitutional law will be aware that the more proscriptive a Constitution is, the more easy it is for a government to over-reach. The purpose of a Constitution is to be the law-of-laws; inherently and historically, it should be less about what a Government cannot do and move about what the sovereign can do. If the sovereign through their elected officials choose to do something that is permissible through the Constitution then it should be done, no matter how stupid (see: Brexit)

charlie14 wrote: »

Like many supporters of the fiasco on here you quickly (and in my view disingenuously) moved from being an avid supporter of water charges to expecting people to believe that your only interest was in an overall authority when water charges were cut off at the knees.
On the WFD was not your strongly stated position that unless we complied with the regime on paying charges above the "free water" household allowance of 30,000 liters per annum then we were going to be hit with daily fine in the millions by the EU. How has that worked out?
At the time you even posted a synopsis on an ECJ ruling to back up that belief, yet somehow failed to include the fact that the ruling stated the allocation of "free water" was entirely a matter for the state, not the EU.


As to your "checks"
Irish Water. Over 1 Billion Euro wasted on a metering project that has not, and never will, returned a cent to the provision of water services. Check.


Water charges for excessive use.
"Free water" allowance increased per household per annum from 30,000 liters to 210,000 liters. A figure that regardless of your wishful thinking on metering will not even come close to paying for the madcap scheme in the lifetime of generations to come, never mind the lifetime of the meters that were buried at such a wasteful cost. Check.

The only thing that changed was the "free water" allowance. Incidentally, until it is actually introduced and functioning, we do not know whether the EU Commission will accept it as meeting the requirements of the WFD. In a future enforcement scenario, if that happens, the obvious solution to an adverse finding will be to drop the level of the allowance. The show ain't over until the fat old lady in the EU Commission sings. They are smart enough to know that until Brexit is finalised, there is no point upsetting the Irish public. Watch this space, it might take another few years, but

As for the meters, they are continuing to be installed in all new builds. The percentage of housing stock covered by water meters will continually rise as a result.

I normally don't hold people to what they said years ago because the biggest sign of intelligence is to change your mind and to accept sometimes that you were wrong. I was right that we needed to charge for water (we are doing so, albeit in a modified way) that a single utility was the correct way forward (Irish Water is still here), that there are huge conservation issues looming (shown last summer). Where I was wrong was about the ability of the FG and Labour government ability to stand up to the mob and I accept that. They have backed down and effectively delayed full implementation of the original proposals. I was also right about FF and SF's craven capitulation to opportunistic populism. I am also right that a referendum is nonsense.


As for the referendum, some people told us it would take place in 2015:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92918631&postcount=4816

And they predicted there would be no Irish Water:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=98848990&postcount=9522

Yet, despite getting all that wrong, you are raising issues with other people getting something wrong. People in glasshouses etc. I could go over other posts and probably find more serious wrongs but they popped up on the first page of a search and I can't be bothered, because as I point out above you are entitled to change your mind and/or admit you were wrong, without being hounded, so I will leave it there.

For what it's worth, I am still an avid supporter of water charges, still a believer in a single national utility and still believe a referendum is nonsense.

charlie14 wrote: »

On the WFD was not your strongly stated position that unless we complied with the regime on paying charges above the "free water" household allowance of 30,000 liters per annum then we were going to be hit with daily fine in the millions by the EU. How has that worked out?

I don't believe the EC has ruled on this yet, unless you have a link to the decision? Arguably the State (the taxpayer) will be paying for anyone using over the allocated limit to Irish Water with "excessive users" being penalised.

So, we're simply paying more taxation into water than before.

Will that pass the polluter pays principle? Perhaps - I think it probably won't which is why the EC is putting it on the long finger for the moment.

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I don't believe the EC has ruled on this yet, unless you have a link to the decision? Arguably the State (the taxpayer) will be paying for anyone using over the allocated limit to Irish Water with "excessive users" being penalised.

So, we're simply paying more taxation into water than before.

Will that pass the polluter pays principle? Perhaps - I think it probably won't which is why the EC is putting it on the long finger for the moment.

The current "free allowance" is set at a high level. It may pass initial scrutiny from the Commission, but it is in the review of our river basin management plan that the Commission will examine the matter closely.

This has a way to go yet. FF are experts at kicking the can down the road, and ultimately that is what has happened.