Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that comments by former Minister of State in the Department of Environment, Fergus O\u2019Dowd, on Irish Water, confirm the general view that the establishment and operation of the new company is a mess and getting messier.<\/p>\n
Former Minister O\u2019Dowd \u2013 the man who established Irish Water- has criticised and described the company as \u2018an unmitigated disaster\u2019.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said: <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear that Irish Water is not fit for purpose and Fergus O\u2019Dowd is correct in his comments regarding the arrogant manner in which this particular company operates.<\/p>\n
“Although the former Minister opposed the sensible Sinn F\u00e9in amendments to the legislation which his government railroaded through Leinster House, I welcome his comments, even at this late stage.<\/p>\n
“Sinn F\u00e9in strongly protested the way the Water Services Bill was rushed through the D\u00e1il and on the last sitting day of 2013, over 30 TDs left the D\u00e1il chamber in protest at the governments legislative rush job.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have already highlighted the massive 50 million being spent on consultants and the unacceptably high salaries and bonuses made available to upper management in Irish Water.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeputy O\u2019 Dowd says he continuously articulated concerns about how Irish Water was run, and despite making the point at every high-level meeting that disadvantaged groups should not suffer an unfair burden, he was ignored. <\/p>\n
“That contrasts sharply with the high level of charges now being placed on households, and the abject failure to take into account the ability of individuals and families to pay, many who are low-income, disadvantaged, disabled or in their senior years.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeputy O\u2019Dowd points out that Irish Water has become \u2018another cosseted quango with a bonus culture and says he simply \u2018could not believe it\u2019 when he heard last January that bonuses were to be paid to Irish Water staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says that he, along with many others, raised his concerns about PPS numbers, but what he continually ignored was the likely future scenario of the company being privatised.<\/p>\n
“A simple change to the legislation could, we believe, ensure that the established, and hugely expensive, Irish Water company could remain in public ownership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am also calling for the current board of Irish Water to be removed and replaced with one that is comprised of people democratically appointed. <\/p>\n
“The comments by former junior Environment Minister Fergus O\u2019Dowd are a devastating indictment of Irish Water, of the new Water Tax and another example of the dysfunctionality of this government.This should include representatives of ordinary households who are being asked to fork out for these new unreasonable water bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Irish Water fiasco involved huge sums of public money being pumped into a body that was neither wanted nor needed. A body that will shortly issue Water Charge bills on the direction of a discredited government, to people who cannot afford to pay <\/p>\n
\u201cThe government needs to acknowledge that many, many households simply cannot afford to pay the Water Tax. <\/p>\n
“They need to give struggling families and hard pressed citizens a break by abolishing this unfair and unjust double tax.” <\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West Sinn F\u00e9in TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has said that comments by former Minister of State in the Department of Environment, Fergus O\u2019Dowd, on Irish Water, confirm the general view that the establishment and operation of the new company is a mess and getting messier. Former Minister O\u2019Dowd \u2013 the man who established Irish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1879,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions\/1879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}