A Government that dug its own sad, watery grave

Country Living with Francis Farragher

In a humble kind of way as an ordinary rustic scribe, I remember back in February of 2015, predicting that the absolute hames made in relation to the establishment of Irish Water and the introduction of water charges, would come back to haunt the Fine Gael, Labour Coalition.

We had all been through quite a horrible eight or nine years of austerity that had involved a slashing of public services, the introduction of the local property tax, a mauling of our health services and for many of us pay cuts as well – now we found ourselves being hit by a draconian water charges regime.

As politics goes, given my age profile and rural background, I would probably slip into the ‘right of centre’ category but I remember being sorely tempted to take part in the first water protest march that was being organised at the time for Galway city.

The demands of the Spring calving season in the end meant that I never made it into Galway that Saturday but if an ordinary country ‘Pake’ like myself felt like protesting on the water charges issue, it showed the depth of anger and hostility that they stirred up among the masses.

Ironically, I had no objection to paying for water and like everyone in the farming community, water charges have been a fact of life for many years now. But it was the sheer arrogance and disregard for the thoughts and feelings of ordinary citizens on the issue that really stirred people.

Phil Hogan might have been one of the pillars of the Fine Gael party through recent decades but his determination as Environment Minister to bulldoze through water charges without proper consultation . . . without the necessary homework being done . . . and most of all without explaining the details of the charges to the general public . . . left one horrible taste in the palates or ordinary Irish people.

There and then, the vast majority of Irish householders had their minds made up that when the time came, some kind of retribution would have to apply, and so it came to pass on the day of February 26, 2016, when the people of Ireland gave the thumbs down to a Government, that in fairness, had done a fair recovery job on a lot of other fronts.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.