I remember they tried to privatize water in Ireland a good few years ago and there was so much backlash that it had to be binned. Basically everyone was destroying the meters that were being installed.

Water is a human right, not a commodity.

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Supernaut 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I remember they tried to privatize water in Ireland a good few years ago

That is not what happened. The government simply introduced plans to charge for water usage. As you say, there was a backlash, albeit only from certain sectors of society. While it did cause the authorities to shelve the charges, it's not correct to say that "everyone" was destroying the new meters; as I recall, there was very little vandalism.

The result of this mob rule is that, like Britain, we have been left with an underfunded, ageing, leaky water network that is essentially incapable of supporting further expansion.

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OJFord 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there not currently a charge for it (other than general taxation)? Metering is orthogonal to privatising - you can be metered or not in the UK, it's usually cheaper to be on a meter.

	▲	bilekas 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		No, so each household has an allowance, to avoid obviously exploitation. For example 0-4 residents have an annual allowance of 213,000 liters. Anything above that is charged at €1.85 per 1000 liters. Note : The average amount of water used by a household in Ireland is 125,000 litres per year These are majority unmetered at the household level so it's not clear to me at least how it's measured. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/water-and-coas...

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jjgreen 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As I recall, the Provisionals threatened to bomb the infrastructure if they did ...