Water Charges (1 Viewer)

[rettucs]

I know its mentioned in the Household Charge thread but sure I thought I'd start a new one anyway.

The government have been consistent in how much of a balls they've made of this. With Phil Hogan to the fore thats hardly surprising (though they seem to have locked Varadkar in a cupboard cos hes nowhere to be seen or heard these days).

I have no major objection to either the 'polluter pays' or the 'pay per usage' methods of levying. Having no water charges leaves things open to abuse and we aren't mindful or careful about how much of it we use. Its hard to feel bad about that though given the amount thats lost via leaks, etc.

But I have some suggestions for the government that might help them to introduce this with some level of acceptance from the general public;

- the cost of water treatment has been paid for up until now. The presumption is that we paid for it through our taxes. Thus, when introducing a water charge, how about reducing taxes somewhere else (VAT for example). Even just as a gesture so people don't feel they're paying twice for the same thing, which seems to be the case here.

- when quoting the cost of water treatment, pipe maintenance, etc, and working out a figure per-household, please also factor in the fact that business currently already pay huge amounts of money in water charges. Maybe they're factoring this in already but its not clear to me.

- don't penalise the punters for the water meters, or at the very least make it painless (by taking a euro a month over however many years).

- announce the allowance that households will get. I've heard 300 litres per day. This may not be finalised as none of this is due to come in until 2014, but this is the sort of shit people need to know about at the same time that costs are being discussed.

- fire that gobshite Phil Hogan. Hes rubbed so many people up the wrong way that he wouldn't be able to redeem himself by giving away free money.


The government are making noises about stabilising the tax base with these levies. And thats fair enough. But they need to take out existing, non-stable taxes (such as stamp duty) which people resent the shit out of paying, before adding these new ones. Because at the moment it seems all they do every day is sit down and see how they can squeeze more and more money out of people.

I didn't pay the household charge. I'm not sure if I'll pay for this. I may not have a choice for the water itself, but probably will for the meter.

anyway..

 

[rettucs]

cue Psycho Punk

 

[pete]

- the cost of water treatment has been paid for up until now. The presumption is that we paid for it through our taxes. Thus, when introducing a water charge, how about reducing taxes somewhere else (VAT for example). Even just as a gesture so people don't feel they're paying twice for the same thing, which seems to be the case here.

See also introduction of bin charges. Well, at least that didn't lead to wholesale privatisation of the service like those against the charges said it would.

Oh...

 

[magicbastarder]

phil hogan's star is very much in the descendant at the moment, but he still has sway given he was a kingmaker for kenny.

water butts are classed as a luxury good for VAT purposes, which is ludicrous. apart from lowering the VAT, the government should be subsidising moves to grey water systems and the like.

my german boss was telling me that he has to pay for:
1. supply of water to his house
2. collection and treatment of the water supplied to his house via the drains
3. collection of the water which falls on his house; they have a measurement of the roof area of his house, and calculate how much water comes down the gutters from his roof, and charge him accordingly.

i think the rough rule of thumb in ireland is that the amount of water which falls on the roof is 20 times the consumption internally. yet we pipe water into houses from miles and miles away.

 

[rettucs]

my german boss was telling me that he has to pay for:
1. supply of water to his house
2. collection and treatment of the water supplied to his house via the drains
3. collection of the water which falls on his house; they have a measurement of the roof area of his house, and calculate how much water comes down the gutters from his roof, and charge him accordingly.

but Germany being German and efficient I'd imagine the cost he pays has a direct correlation to his consumption relative to the actual cost of providing the service, and that money is probably ringfenced specifically for water. In Ireland we can be almost sure that some of the money we pay for water charges will be going into the bank bailouts. That really grates.

As for bin charges, I only started having a real problem with that this year. Up to now I paid per lift. I put my bin out approximately 8/9 times per year because I generate very little waste. Thus the cost was negligible. This year though Greyhound impose a flat fee that must be paid before you pay per lift. I get to pay the exact same as the family of 5 across the road who put their bin out every week, despite them putting their bin out every week. But, it seems I had little choice now that its privatised and all.

 

[Unicron]

- announce the allowance that households will get. I've heard 300 litres per day. This may not be finalised as none of this is due to come in until 2014, but this is the sort of shit people need to know about at the same time that costs are being discussed.

Eddie Hobbs (I know, fuck that guy, I hate him too) was on the Pat Kenny (Ik,ftg,ihht) show earlier this week talking about it. He claimed that the only party to announce a proposed allowance so far was the greens. Something like 20 l per person per day.

 

[ann post]

denis o brien (thats denis 'moriarty' o'brien) seems to have recently gotten a great deal on a company that deals with water meters.

As part of the deal, IBRC (formerly Anglo Irish Bank) has agreed to take a haircut of more than 70 per cent on the € 150 million in outstanding debt it is owed by Siteserv, which is listed on the secondary markets of Dublin and London and employs some 2,300.Without this agreement, “the proposed disposal would not be capable of implementation and it is likely that shareholders would not have realised any return on their investment”, said Siteserv.
While IBRC declined to comment on the transaction, it is understood that a sale was seen as the best alternative to the bank versus other options for getting some return back on its loan.
Shareholders, including chief executive Brian Harvey, Chris Neate and John Neal, will receive €4.96 million, or €3.92 per share. This represents a premium of 96 per cent on Thursday’s share price, or a premium of 26.9 per cent based on the average price of Siteserv over 12 months.
The company was purchased through an Isle of Man-based firm, Millington Ltd, which was established in December 2011 and is controlled by Mr O’Brien. A spokesman for Mr O’Brien said he was the only investor.

i suppose maybe o'brien has potentially gotten some kind of inside knowledge on the water metering contracts. or he was just bored.

 

[magicbastarder]

i was once shown where a lot of the storm drains in castleknock drain into the tolka. due to the builders in castleknock generally taking the easy route, an awful lot of the sink outflows flow into the storm drain system, and not the foul drain system, so all the soap and detergent from the sinks ends up in the tolka, rather than generally just the rainwater.
it's one of the reasons the tolka is not a healthy river (albeit with salmon having been spotted in it recently for the first time in decades).

i know it's not exactly pertinent to the discussion here, but it's just another example of how bad planning and bad enforcement has fucked up the water system in ireland.

 

[shower another shower]

Sure, all tax will eventually go to servicing debt until those payments can't be made. Then all sovereign nations will be forced to sell all public assets to service the debt and be bought up at reduced rates by the world banks. End of democracy. New world order. FEMA camps. Population reduction etc. It's all in Agenda 21.
Where's Jim Corr when ye need him?

 

[pete]

Announcing the establishment of Irish Water this week, Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan acknowledged flat non-metered charges “do nothing to encourage households to use less water”.​

​

The Government is seeking to introduce “universal metering”, believing it to be the fairest way to charge households for water, and the best method of achieving conservation.

However, executive manager with Dublin City Council Tom Leahy estimated one-third of houses in Dublin “will always be on a standing charge” and that the national situation would be broadly similar.


He said that, in addition to apartments, many houses could not have meters fitted because they shared supply pipes with neighbours, or their mains water supply entered the house under their back gardens.


Such properties would have to pay a standing charge which would not reflect the amount of water used, said Mr Leahy, who is responsible for water provision for 39 per cent of the State’s population.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0421/breaking3.html

 

[TheModernDance]

Feckin' briliant. I say bring them on. We need the infrastructure upgraded...


Irish water utilities leak an astonishing 41 percent of the water they pump before the water reaches any customer, more than twice the leak rate in the U.K. or the U.S.


Per person water use in Ireland is about 37,000 gallons a year — between two and three times the average for the rest of Europe.


I think also read somewhere that most the water used in a household isn't for drinking of showering but is wasted.


http://www.environ.ie/en/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,29192,en.pdf

 

[rettucs]

Irish water utilities leak an astonishing 41 percent of the water they pump before the water reaches any customer, more than twice the leak rate in the U.K. or the U.S.

right, and thats our fault I suppose?

Per person water use in Ireland is about 37,000 gallons a year — between two and three times the average for the rest of Europe.

thats bullshit. I don't use that much.

 

[magicbastarder]

that figure probably includes industrial usage, which would go into the per capita calculations, so you would use far more than you think.
but you obviously wouldn't be metered for that.

 

[Unicron]

that figure probably includes industrial usage, which would go into the per capita calculations, so you would use far more than you think.
but you obviously wouldn't be metered for that.

And possibly the wastage too.

 

[rettucs]

that figure probably includes industrial usage, which would go into the per capita calculations, so you would use far more than you think.
but you obviously wouldn't be metered for that.

Its also already being paid for.

 

[magicbastarder]

according to this, domestic use accounts for only one sixth of water use in ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

 

[rettucs]

according to this, domestic use accounts for only one sixth of water use in ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

thats why I said this in my opening post;

- when quoting the cost of water treatment, pipe maintenance, etc, and working out a figure per-household, please also factor in the fact that business currently already pay huge amounts of money in water charges. Maybe they're factoring this in already but its not clear to me.

the govt go on about it as if theres no money generated from water usage, when the reality is that there is, and there are levies imposed on the major consumers of water.

Its typical bullshit from Fine Gael though. I see Varadkar came out from under his rock again at the weekend and apologies on behalf of the party, without their consent no doubt. They're a fucking shambles.

 

[Psycho Punk]

Thugs like Hogan were around even in medieval days.

Medieval water tax collectors show Big Phil how it's done
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0510/1224315844542.html
JOHN COLLINS

Thu, May 10, 2012
WATER CHARGES in Ireland have a long and colourful history dating back to the 13th century, according to documents being published online for the first time today.

Critics of Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan will have to concede his approach to water charges is positively enlightened compared to the approach adopted by Maurice FitzGerald, chief governor of Ireland back in 1244.

In a letter dated April 29th of that year, FitzGerald ordered the sheriff to summon a jury of 12 men, who would consider “where water can be best and most conveniently taken from its course and conducted to the king’s city of Dublin”. The project “for the improvement of the city” was crucially to be carried out at “the cost of the citizens”.

The governor told the sheriff that anyone who opposed the scheme should “be suppressed by force”. Those who went a step further and “resist” the water scheme, presumably the anti-household charge protesters of their day, were “to be arrested and held until further order”.

The letter is one of 20,000 government documents from the Middle Ages being made available online following 40 years of work by historians at Trinity College Dublin.

The documents re-create some of the archives destroyed when the Public Record Office in Dublin went up in flames in the Civil War in 1922.

The Public Records Office, a victim of the shelling of the Four Courts, was home to the rolls of the medieval chancery. The chancery was the secretariat of the British administration in Ireland and was established shortly after the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169.

Letters it issued in the king’s name, which carried the great seal of Ireland, were copied by medieval chancery clerks on to long rolls of parchment known as “chancery rolls”. All of the chancery rolls were destroyed in the 1922 fire.

The historians at Trinity have tracked down alternative sources for the documents in collections in Ireland, England and the US, with the national archives in Britain proving a particularly fruitful source.

Launched today, Circle: A Calendar of Irish Chancery Letters, c.1244–1509 ( chancery.tcd.ie) is a free website which provides English copies of the original Latin documents.

“This digitisation resource involving four decades of research by Trinity historians is a triumph of historical detective work that will revolutionise our understanding of Irish medieval history,” said Dr Patrick Prendergast, provost of Trinity.

“The material will also prove invaluable for Irish families nationally and internationally interested in tracing their roots back to the Middle Ages.”

 

[rettucs]

yeah, so this was in the news.

fiver to flush the jacks
tenner for a shower
100 euro for a bath

we will be one stinkin shower of fuckers #smellyirish

 

[GO]

I'm gonna be shiteing in a bucket and popping it into the bruscar