http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/o ... e-protests

Nobody should have to pay for water, it's about nothing but profit for a basic human right.

+1. You can sell people bottled water if you want to make ludicrous profits, but in terms of water supply to people's homes? I can't imagine anyone who isn't a sociopath wanting to make money off it.

Am I missing something? We've always had to pay for water (UK and Germany).

Somebody has to pay for the laying and maintenance of water pipes, purifying and transporting the waste water and treating it.

That's what taxes are for, same as we pay for everything else we use that keeps society going. Look at how everything else we sold turned out.

We have to pay for every litre coming through thru pipes (thousandths of a cent or so per litre). In England I used to have to pay a set amount, based on the size of the house, to the water company (they wanted to switch to metred usage as I emigrated, which would have saved me a lot of money) and in Germany it is all metered.

and that's the problem in Ireland - they have not invested in the water supply system - after all there is always something more important to spend the money on so they put the investment off for another year
Also if its free there is zero incentive to save any of it. Parts of Ireland are now having water shortages

So get your water for free from a local stream or river.

Of course, you might need to pay someone to patrol upstream to make sure there aren't any dead animals in there, and to make sure that nobody is dumping chemical waste. Better still you can buy a water purifier to make sure, but don't forget to buy and replace the filter media periodically.

Oh, and if you get tired of running up and down with buckets of water, you can always invest in some pumps and pipework to save you the trip - but make sure you get planning to dig up the roads to bury the pipe, hopefully you live very near to the stream and you won't need to excavate for miles of pipework; but make sure you go nice and deep to avoid that pesky ground frost damage to your supply line. A geological survey would be worthwhile too - you wouldn't want to run your pipeline through soft or unstable ground.

While you're at it, you can run a sewage pipe in the opposite direction and dump your waste a little farther down stream - of course you'll need a discharge consent from the Environment Agency and you'll be legally required to sample the effluent and have it independently tested on a monthly basis - that shouldn't cost too much though, should it?

It might seem like a bit of an effort, but it'll be yours and it'll be free, right?

I can absolutely understand why people in Ireland are so upset.
If you pay for your water through general taxation then that's one way to do it. Unfortunately, as we know with a varriety of critical infrastructure things 'paid for' through general taxation (roads spring to mind) the level of investment may or may not match the requirement to sustain and improve the system. I also can't think of any simple way to enocourage efficient usage of the resource.

On the one hand, having the money taken and ring fenced for something like the water supply infrastruture is potentially a good thing as it ensures that's what it gets spent on (in theory).
On the other hand, if the money for water is split out of general taxation as a separate charge and there isn't a comensurate reduction in other taxes there's certainly a good argument that you're being screwed, especially as, in Irelands case, taxes have gone up significantly due to austerity and now this is being lumped in on top.

More important than a viable clean water supply? Blithering idiots.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30069525



It's been quite the campaign so far - I think the politicians have pushed austerity as far as it'll go with the voters.

I disagree. You should have to cover the costs (and just the costs) or getting it safe, piped to your house, and the waste water treated.
People profiting for it on the other hand, that's a whole different matter.

The goverment has set up a Co to run it so the profit is not going to some private company. If you want to invest then you need to make some profit (that then gets re-invested)

if you're a private company, yes. If you're the state, no. State infrastructure spending is expected, it's one of the things we pay tax for. That's why a small group of things including water supply should be state owned. They're a resource every single person needs every day that most of us see as a right (unless you're a Nestle executive anyway). Because they require investment and making a profit from them is seen as unacceptable by a large portion of the population they should be something we all pay into as we all get the benefit from them.

Course in fact the Irish protests aren't about privatisation anyway, they're about people paying an extra charge. Their water supply was paid for out of general taxation and now they're going to be charged extra for it but general taxation hasn't dropped proportionately. So in effect they're paying for it twice. This is a good old fashioned tax protest at it's core.

Sorry I disagree - The state does not want to finanace the cost of major improvement works - it wants the users to pay for it. The state owned compant needs to make a profit so that it can spread the cost of improving the pipes (say) over a number of years - it will make a profit in the years when no major investment is needed and put that towards the costs when it needs to invest - and if its a large investment it will borrow the money on the open market and will use the profit to pay back the cost of the loan

The problem with relying on the state to pay the cost of improving the drains is that there is alway something more important to spend the money on

Well, if everyone is going to use it - which with water supply is pretty much true - why not use the existing mechanism of revenue generation i.e. taxation to get people to 'pay' for it, which is that they have been doing, rather than spending money to set up a whole new mechanism specifically to do so? In practical terms how is the system they're setting up better than the one they already have? Or is it actually just a way of getting a valuable asset out of 'state' hands as a preparation for actual privatisation at some point?


With all due respect, you're presenting one model as demonstrable fact, when it is simply not. There's no reason the supplier of water 'needs' to make a profit, it can be run on an entirely non-commercial footing. Profit doesn't have to come into it at all. You can choose the 'investment via profit' model if you wish, but there are several high profile examples where it's proved to be less efficient than the alternatives. Not every model works in every circumstance.


See my post earlier. Cut your water off or seal up your sewage outlet and see how many other things are more important to you a few hours later. The fact politicians believe these things to be less important does not make it so. By the looks of things, some chunk of the voting population don't agree with them either.

Your argument is actually that the Irish should get rid of their politicians, not that they should privatise their water supply.