Cagey cabinet remains under fire over water

World of Politics with Harry McGee

De Valera only had to look into his heart to discover what the people of Ireland are thinking. The rest of us have to rely on more mundane methods – pub talk; opinion polls; headlines in the papers; other mood-o-meters such as what’s dominating Joe Duffy or how many people are turning out at protests.

My own sense of the water charges row is that a mind-shift in the public mood may have happened over the course of the weekend.

The first was the decision by Government to pre-release details of the revised water charges plan.

On the fact of it, this doesn’t look too positive but in a way it is. To find out why read on:

There’s no doubt that it’s a U-turn, a climbdown and fudge.

You have the ridiculous situation where €500 million is being spent on installing water meters that won’t be used for at least five years.

What does that remind you of?

Yep, the electronic voting machines.

One of the difficulties is that the technology might already be out of date by the time the meters start rolling – requiring further investment.

Instead, we will have a flat charge for five years. And that’s going to be much reduced.

Every household will be entitled to a €100 allowance. And the multiple tiers of charging have been replaced by two flat rates: €176 for a single adult household and €278 for a household with two adults or more.

That essentially means that families with three grown up children living at home won’t be hit with bills of almost €600 but will pay less than €200 when the €100 allowance is taken into account.

There’s a catch. You won’t get the €100 allowance unless you pass on the details of your Irish Water registration to the Department of Social Protection. That provides a powerful motive (a money motive!) for registration so the Government is banking on it being the incentive to get more people to sign up.

At the moment, only about half the 1.7 million households in the State have signed up – the Government is hoping that others will now follow suit, as they did when the Revenue took over the handling of property tax.

The proof of the pudding of course will be in the eating.

The second significant event that happened over the course of the weekend that might have changed the public sentiment was the over-aggression of protestors in West Tallaght on Saturday, and in other places in succeeding days.

The Tánaiste Joan Burton was penned into her car for over two and a half hours as she was trying to leave a graduation ceremony in Jobstown. The protest was organised on Facebook from the night before when it was learned that Burton would be there. A few hundred protesters turned up for what was an organised demonstration (no stewarts or no crowd control).

It quic

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.