Irish Water’s journey comes unstuck on silt

Political World with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

A film I never tire of watching is Midnight Run starring Robert de Niro, made when he was still acting in decent roles.

It’s a comedy and the plot premise is simple. A bounty hunter has to get a crooked accountant who has done work for the mafia from the east coast of the US to the west coast within a specified period.

Of course the proposition seems a simple one. But there are complications and problems every step of the way and what started off as a straightforward journey becomes a tense exhausting epic. And naturally, our heroes (plot spoiler: yes the accountant is also in that category) eventually make it.

So what’s the point of comparing Midnight Run with Irish Water? Well, both promised to take us on uncomplicated journeys (remember the Irish Water booklet telling us we are all starting off on a journey together).

And like Midnight Run that journey has sure as hell got convoluted and twisted. But unlike Midnight Run at this stage we are just not sure if our heroes are going to make it eventually.

And the heroes (or antiheroes) in this case are the Government and John Tierney, the beleaguered chief executive of Irish Water.

The setting up of the water utility has been a textbook example of how it shouldn’t be done.

If you go back the seeds of the idea came from Fine Gael when the party was in opposition and also from the Fianna Fáil and Green coalition which first suggested the idea of charging for public water.

For Fine Gael it was all part of its bigger New Era policy first unveiled in 2009 that proposed setting up an overarching body to manage state utility companies, while keeping the infrastructure (pipes, networks, grids etc) in national ownership. Part of this was to set up a national water utility, taking over responsibility from the 34 local authorities.

Enter the Troika. The natural instinct of a politician is to look for the line of least resistance. Nobody likes taxes and – surprise, surprise – new taxes are never popular.

What the Troika inferred to the political class that it could take the hard decisions and the politicians could do a bit of blame transfer – in other words, provide cover.

I was writing earlier on this week that it was a bit of an irony that the masses just wouldn’t take to the streets during the period of disgrace and loss of sovereignty.

And then just as soon as the Troika slung their hooks and the economy started to look up they descended on the State’s institutions in vast numbers.

The anger and frustration was real. You could see it from the images of the march in Galway last weekend, when big crowds defied the awful sodden weather to march and make their point.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.