Sir, – Most citizens who are currently being asked to register with Irish Water have already paid handsomely in taxes during their lifetime for the current water infrastructure. I propose that in order to acknowledge this undisputed fact and to avoid the problem of asking citizens to pay twice, the State should issue one share in Irish Water to each citizen as a reward for their investment to date. Each year we would receive a dividend and when it is eventually sold, we would all get a nice lump sum.
As a shareholder of Irish Water, I would be much more likely to register and pay my water charges. – Yours, etc,
EOGHAN KAVANAGH,
Rathgar, Dublin 14.
Sir, – Laurence Hogan (October 24th) is wrong to claim that the troika required Ireland to introduce water charges in order to help pay back the bailout loans. The reality is that the troika’s assessment of the Irish taxation structure showed it to have become dangerously overdependent on windfall tax revenues from an unsustainable property bubble.
When that bubble inevitably burst, tax revenues duly collapsed with it, creating a massive and unsustainable budget deficit. As such, the troika’s insistence on water charges and a property tax merely sought to bring Ireland into line with other developed countries, where such taxes make the tax base more sustainable, more predictable, and less reliant on transaction taxes and short-term windfalls from one overblown sector of the economy. – Yours, etc,
JOHN SHEEHAN,
Lucan, Co Dublin.
Sir, – Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly asserts that Irish Water must deal with customers in a “fantastic way” (“Kelly seeks ‘people of calibre’ for new board”, October 23rd).
He should know that it is already doing so. It has unnecessarily spent a fantastic amount of money (€50 million) on consultants. It has come up with a fantastic set of repair charges that have turned its repair personnel into said consultants. It is paying its staff fantastic salaries and even more fantastic bonuses, whether they perform or not, and is already overstaffed by a fantastic 33 per cent. It has made fantastic promises regarding timescales for meter installations which cannot be met. It will take a fantastic amount of money out of the economy next year and succeeding years with no published strategy as to how it will be spent and what fantastic advantages will accrue to its fantastic customer base for this most basic civil right. It is quite fantastic to think that it may get away with it.
It is equally fantastic that the Coalition might think it has a hope of re-election on the back of such a fantastic cock-up. – Yours, etc,
DEREK MacHUGH,
Dublin 18.
Sir, – For the second time on an RTÉ news programme, I have heard Clare Daly TD state that we pay for our water through the general tax system and that she is not in the habit of paying twice for services.
I live in a rural area and am not connected to either the mains water or sewage system. I have incurred the capital cost and ongoing running costs of installing a water pump and effluent treatment plant. I also pay my taxes on the same basis as other citizens of this State. Does this mean that I, and hundreds of thousands of others, are due a repayment of tax, as we have paid for a water service over many years which was not provided to us by the State? – Yours, etc,
LIAM MURPHY,
Monasterevin, Co Kildare.