GOVERNMENT plans to introduce water tax later this year has even less credibility among the public after the flooding of recent weeks, according to a local election candidate for Limerick City East.
The Anti Austerity Alliance’s Derrick Towell commented, “For the Government to defend charging ordinary householders for water after what has happened makes them look more and more like snake oil salesmen trying to sell sand to the Arabs and ice to the eskimos.”
Mr Towell described it as a “national scandal” that legislation had not been put in place before the building boom which would have legally required builders and developers to install rainwater harvesting facilities in new dwellings.
Such legislation, he believes, would have meant that approximately 50 percent of dwellings would currently be harvesting rainwater for domestic use.
“Candidates representing the parties that have supported the introduction of water tax — Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour — should get hammered in May’s local elections. A nationwide boycott of water taxes should also be prepared for 2015,” said Mr Towell.
