Green Party says water charges exemption expired six years ago

The Green Party has insisted the water charges derogation offered to Ireland expired six years ago when the Fianna Fáil/Green government agreed to introduce the levies .

Saying he understood the exemption ended six years ago, Green leader Eamon Ryan, who served in cabinet in 2010, said he was not surprised by the European Commission's warning this week. The River Basin Management Plan submitted to the European Commission in 2010 committed to the introduction of the levies: "Once a strategic decision was made to move towards a payment system, the derogation was void at that time. So what the commission is now outlining came as no surprise to me."

Asked if that view was conveyed to the Fianna Fáil-Green government at the time Mr Ryan said he could not recall. However, he said it was his understanding of the position.

The commission has insisted Ireland cannot breach the European water framework directive and "established practices" must remain. The commission defines the "established practice" as the "polluter pays" principle and the cost recovery mechanism, ie water charges. However, many political parties including Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil have refuted that.

Legal opinion

Fianna Fáil says it has legal advice it claims will allow Ireland to abolish charges but will not publish it. The party said it has a 33-page opinion from a senior counsel which refutes the commission’s position.

The party's environment spokesman, Barry Cowen, said: "I am absolutely convinced and emphatic that the response this week is no different to a response issued to Alan Kelly in 2010. In Ireland, this established practice refers to the meeting of water costs through general taxation. It's disingenuous to claim that established practice refers to the current haphazard implementation of water charges. This claim is easily dismissed when you consider the high rate of non-compliance with the charges, the fact that the Government is heavily subsidising bills and Irish Water's failure to pass the Eurostat test. This is far from 'established practice'."

The commission is understood to be willing to impose heavy daily fines on Ireland over its failure to adhere to the directive. It is said to be“extremely frustrated” at State failure to lodge a major plan to govern Ireland’s water resources over coming years, which was due in December 2015.

Ireland in crosshairs

It has linked the delay in filing the River Basin Management Plan to the political debate over the future of Irish Water and water charges. The commission will request information from the Government before moving on to enforcement proceedings. Former minister for the environment Alan Kelly claimed the commission is watching this and it is “going to come after Ireland”.

He said: “A government can tweak the charges but ultimately there will be charges to ensure that there is cost recovery, that the user pays and the polluter principle is in place.

“We have EU laws that we have to adhere to, that we signed up to. In such scenarios they take supremacy over national law, because we signed up to it as a country. You can’t just cherry-pick. You can’t just pick the laws at European level that you like and the ones that we don’t like you throw away.”

Sinn Féin TD Eoin O'Broin said the commission's only formal view is that member states cannot breach the directive. He said off-the-record briefings to journalists do not reflect their official position. Mr O'Broin said the commission is trying to "get Fine Gael out of a mess" and insists the law directly states water charges are not the established process.