People Before Profit will oppose any attempt to bring in water charges including excessive use charges, according to its Dún Laoghaire TD Richard Boyd Barrett.
“We will resist anything that tries to leave the back door open to bringing those charges back in. Excessive use charges are that,” he said.
Speaking at the party’s annual press conference in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin, he said “there’s no evidence whatsoever of wastage by householders in this country. The big wasters are the Government who have failed to fix the 40 per cent leaks in the water mains systems.”
The Oireachtas committee on water charges has agreed a draft plan that households using 70 per cent more than the normal usage limit could face financial penalties. He said water leaks “won’t be addressed and haven’t been addressed by water charges. It will be addressed by a major increase in public investment in the public water infrastructure and that’s what we’re fighting for.”
About 200 people attended the day-long conference for the party which has three TDs, one MLA in the Northern Ireland Assembly and 11 councillors.
Mr Boyd Barrett told reporters the party could win between two and four more Dáil seats at the next election despite falls in the polls. He described opinion polls as volatile and said the party had made significant advances in the last general election, increasing their numbers.
“All indications are that our organisation is growing across the country.”
Housing crisis
He said people were very supportive of the party’s stance opposing water charges and for trying to demand radical action in the housing crisis and in the health service as well as protecting public sector workers against “savage attacks on their jobs and conditions and on the services themselves”.
Mr Boyd Barrett said “I wouldn’t like to predict but I certainly think with a strong campaign we can hold on to the seats we have and we think we could get two, three, four more seats”.
He also hoped “that our alliance partners, Solidarity, would also make reasonably significant seat gains in any forthcoming election”.
He insisted the relationship between People Before Profit and Solidarity was very good, despite the two parties having gone against each other in at least one Dáil vote.
He relationship had “given us critical mass and voice at a national level to get across left-wing, socialist politics and has seen both organisations grow significantly. And we have a bigger impact in the Dáil.”
He rejected suggestions that not having a leader prevented the party’s progress. “We reject the idea of a great leader cracking the whip. That sort of rotten politics is what’s discredited the political establishment.”
Assembly elections
Gerry Carroll the party's sole MLA in the North said it was disappointing that their Derry MLA, Eamonn McCann, did not retain his seat in the Assembly elections. But Mr McCann's and the party's vote had increased.
“There may be two feet inside Stormont but there are thousands and thousands of feet on the street to campaign in the months ahead against the austerity we’re facing.”
Conference delegates gave a sustained standing ovation to eight NBRU and Siptu Bus Éireann workers involved in the dispute, and repeatedly chanted “The workers, united, will never be defeated.”
Dublin South Central TD Bríd Smith said “if the company and the Government manage to drive down the wages for workers in Bus Éireann, this will become a blueprint for the sister companies in CIÉ and beyond.
“So it is the businesses of all of us what happens with this dispute because it is about the future of and the quality of work and pay in this country.”
