THE IRISH PEOPLE will be told how much they have to pay for water “in good time” the Taoiseach told the Dáil today without going into specifics.
The opposition grilled Enda Kenny on reports this week that Irish Water will apply a standing charge of €100 on households for water provision when charges are introduced later this year.
Kenny insisted that “Uisce Éireann is not the government” and said the people will “know in good time” but he gave no specific timetable.
The Taoiseach said there was “no basis” for the suggestion of a standing charge of €100, as reported in the Irish Independent this week, saying this had come from “a draft memo from Irish Water” and that the government has not signed off on anything.
“The people will be informed in good time of the decision of the government,” Kenny said in response to questions from the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin.
Martin said that the government had been promising a decision on water charges for months and said there was a “clearly strategy” in government to “keep the public in the dark”.
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams suggested that the establishment of Irish was a prelude to privatisation of the water supply in the State, but Kenny said that the government has decided that “this is not privatisation of water”.
The Taoiseach said that there has been no decision on the level of water charges, the level of government subvention or any standing charge that households will have to pay.
He repeated that the government will make a decision on this “shortly”.
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