While the Dail ‘debate’ focuses on the alleged 7% of users who allegedly
overuse their share of the 54% of treated water that actually reaches our taps, the
sieve-like pipeworks leak the other 47%. That’s 47% of the treated water for which
we’ve already paid.
The solution isn’t and can’t be to spend another €300 million on meters; it has
to be to spend it all on stopping the leaks.
W
hen the news first broke about the phonied-up Tusla report with the
phoney allegations against Maurice McCabe, a lot of us were so focussed
on the ‘alleged’ campaign against McCabe that we forgot to ask the
obvious question: what were they doing cutting and pasting files in the
first place?
Surely that activity in itself is, to say the least, deeply dodgy? To say the most,
it’s unethical and probably illegal. Isn’t the cut-and-paste story a bit like using a
robbery as an alibi for a stalking offence?
T
he refusal of the government to intervene in the Bus Eireann dispute and the
apparent impossibility of compromise threatens us with two equally disastrous
potential outcomes:
1. The collapse of the unions involved and a reduction of pay and conditions
for workers ultimately to equal that of the private bus companies, leaving
Bus Eireann ripe for privatisation. This is the race to the bottom outcome.
2. The collapse of Bus Eireann and privatisation of the remnants. This
is the scorched-earth outcome.
I have two numbers for the Minister for Hand-washing should they allow Bus Eireann
to collapse:
1. The minimum increased cost of Social Welfare alone if Bus Eireann collapses
and all 2600 Bus Eireann workers are thrown onto the dole: €188 per worker per
week per annum: €25,417,600.
(That's supposing all workers are single, have no children, and are
mmrent- and mortgage-free.)
2. The cost of covering Bus Eireann's losses for the year: €18 million.
The Government has to accept that Bus Eireann’s losses are at least in part due
to their policy of allowing private companies to cherry-pick all the profitable routes;
it has to accept responsibility for those losses if rural Ireland is to be properly served
by public transport.
The obvious and equitable solution is to increase the subsidies to public
transport by the amount of Bus Eireann’s shortfall. They'd be quids in. They'd have
averted the disaster of allowing Bus Eireann to collapse. Rural Ireland would still have
a bus service to moan about. And Shane Ross would be a hero. What's not to love?
(Apart from the last bit).