Water Charges

So, on the way back home in the car and all the talk was about water rates. Mary Wilson was conducting a not-too-brilliant conversation with Joanne Tuffy from the Labour party and Oisin from one of those ecological do goody goody NGO's.

All rather frustrating, I don't see the solution as being particularly taxing so to speak.

In relation to taxes, people are looking for two things. They want fair taxes based on ability to pay, and they want transparency on where those taxes go.

For example the taxes we pay for the roads infrastructure and all the associated costs is a fraction of the revenue the government used to generate through VRT, fuel taxes and road taxes. While there has been a huge improvement in our road structure recently it really only brings us up to a base minimal standard. All the other taxes raised have been used for a variety of other forms of public spending.

So when we tax the public for water charges, we need to show that all the income is used exclusively to do the following:

1. Reduce the amount of water households use. The waste of water in this country is enormous, because rather like a free bar people abuse the privilege. The only way to stop the abuse is to charge people for it. Personally I'd estimate you could reduce water usage by 40% with a direct tax.

2. Improving the infrastructure. So we lose 30% of our water through leaking pipes etc. It'll cost a lot to replace and fix these, and you'll never be able to cure it, but you could cut this water loss in half. Infrastructure also refers to supplying meters to every house and giving discount vouchers for people to purchase water butts.

3. Improving the quality of water. Because of our unique heritage I think we should be aiming to have the best quality water in Europe. Why do people need to buy bottles water if the tap water provided is of a better quality. Remember Dasani?

So how do we implement this tax? Fairly?

You'll need some independent expert to come up with a formulae where you enter in # number in the household and their ages. This will give you a quarterly amount that they should be consuming. Now take 10% off this volume. Every unit that the household goes above this volume realises itself as a direct water tax.

For the poor, pensioners and the like, add 10% to their volume and tax them only if they exceed this inflated amount.

Will this raise enough tax? I don't know, but it's a start one feels. But here's the beauty, once you've paid for the infrastructure and purification you can drastically decrease the taxation on the public, because all you're paying for is the maintenance of your water systems.

But you're still left with all the measures needed to reduce the wastage.

If I was in government I would be talking to the UK to set up a joint water pipeline to pump all our excess water into southern Europe. Because we know that water in the 21st century is going to become a very valuable commodity.

My suggestion would be for our high quality purified water should be sold on a commercial basis to southern EU countries and the proceeds used to deliver heavily subsidised water to Africa using the same pipelines.

What's not to like?