When the government signed the EU water framework directive in 1999, it sought and secured a derogation in one area of the directive's application. Charges on the use of domestic water were exempt because Ireland, unlike most other EU states, did not make householders pay for their use of a scarce natural resource.
Since 1999, successive governments have had eight years to prepare for the full implementation of the EU directive, which must be in operation by 2010. Nevertheless, the relevant government departments - environment and education and science - have made slow progress in deciding how the water directive will be implemented. And their tardiness has left the Government badly exposed in the controversy over the escalating cost of water charges that local authorities have levied, in the meantime, on schools.
The row caught Ministers completely off guard and unprepared as they struggled to explain how various local authorities have charged different rates for water use by schools, which many have struggled to pay. In some cases schools have accumulated large water bills over several years which they have been unable to pay. The Government has now bought some time, and offered a temporary solution, via the Taoiseach's announcement that schools will be given a two-year exemption from the payment of full local authority water bills. Instead, they will pay a flat-rate charge "appropriate to their size", most likely until 2009.
What the Government has yet to decide is how this prescription will work in practice, and how past and present, paid and unpaid, bills for water charges will be treated. The Minister for Education has said that she does not expect those schools that have paid water charges to get a refund. But she is unclear how those unable to pay their bills will clear their debts. That may become apparent next month, when the Government is due to outline the details of its proposed transition scheme.
It is quite clear the EU is not to blame, as has been suggested, for this local difficulty. It has been of our own creation. The water directive, from which Irish householders have secured an exemption, does not come into force until 2010. And the EU has allowed a 10-year transition period, which is more than sufficient time to make all necessary preparations.
The EU water directive is designed to conserve water, by ensuring that all water users pay. In Ireland, however, that means schools must pay for their water usage, while householders do not. In the context of a global water crisis, that reflects a strange ordering of priorities.