Brendan Ogle has proven an articulate and capable figurehead of the Right2Water campaign.

Brendan Ogle has proven an articulate and capable figurehead of the Right2Water campaign.


An Garda Síochána – the agents of Irish Water: so more than a few anti-water charge protestors would have us believe.
“We’re living in a police state, the Guards are all fascists, they’re scumbags,” – such phraseology has become readily familiar to Facebook users in recent months. But let’s face it: it’s sticks and stones stuff.
The ‘police state/scumbag’ comments ring in our ears nowadays with a near equal resonance to the coalition’s defiant noises over the public utility they created and developed without sufficient foresight.
Cack-handed is the word which most springs to mind about this solely Government-created mess, for fear anyone thinks I’m about to launch a defence of behalf of Fine Gael or Labour on Uisce Éireann. The respective wonks in both parties can do that.
But the sight of dozens of Gardaí in our neighbourhoods is most unwelcome. One can readily understand public frustration when seeing a multitude of Gardaí in an estate during meter installations at a time when we’re told resources in the force are limited, and when squad cars can be delayed in responding to a 999 call-out.
If political policing is afoot, as has been claimed more than once in recent months, the Fennelly Report would read like a take-away menu in comparison to any proof ever emerging from this oft-repeated assertion.
After all, the Garda Commissioner is responsible for the direction, management and control of the force on a day-to-day basis, while the Minister for Justice is responsible to Government for the Gardaí’s performance. The command structure is, to me, pretty clear.
Of course, we’re limited in terms of what can be commented upon with respect to last Tuesday’s events in Bracken Grove, given that Judge Kevin Staunton adjourned a case arising from what occurred on the Kilcohan estate until Tuesday, October 20th – and Cherrymount too for that matter.
But one can discuss the ongoing and wider debate about water and the implications it may have come the next general election – and those implications could prove significant.
The ‘Right2Water’ campaign, spearheaded by Unite’s Brendan Ogle, has added the ‘Right2Change’ string to its bow, and once its ‘Town Hall’ meeting tour has been completed, Mr Ogle and his colleagues will decide whether to field general election candidates or not.
Quite clearly, given the tens of thousands who have taken to the streets more than once, there’s a constituency out there which feels disserved by the three main political parties – grossly disserved. And if Right2Change, pardon the pun, doesn’t ‘tap’ into that angst, I’d be very surprised.
The ability of the disaffected to influence political and social change will be disserved if this one and same constituency doesn’t vote in significant numbers come the next general election.
“The working class has always been a majority, but we’ve always been ruled by a minority,” Brendan Ogle told a Right2Water meeting in Waterford last November. “And that’s because for too long we have focused on what we have disagreed on.”
At that meeting, Brendan Ogle reference United Nations Resolution 64/292 of July 28th, 2010 which states: “The United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognised the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realisation of all human rights.
“The Resolution calls upon States and international organisations to provide financial resources, help capacity-building and technology transfer to help countries, in particular developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.”
Interestingly, re-reading the resolution, one notes that it references both the provision of financial resources to provide clean drinking water and the need for such water to be affordable. Yet the resolution, at least in my reading of it, does not state that water should be free.
“But if you have no money,” as Brendan Ogle pointed out that night, “and that might be for all sorts of reasons, how do you vindicate your human right? You can’t.”
And that, for me, is the kernel of Brendan Ogle’s argument, and it’s one he’s articulated very well these past few months, which leads me to suggest that Right2Change ought to embrace a general election campaign.
Back to meters for a paragraph or two: as someone pointed out to me last week, if you’re not going to pay for the meter and are adamant on that point, then what’s ultimately to be gained from physically preventing its installation? Bragging rights on Facebook?
The actual presence of the meter, even if one is utterly opposed to its existence, is surely as irrelevant as the bills that those opposed to the charge will ignore every time the postman delivers them.
The most productive, consequential and meaningful manifestation of the anti-water charge campaign has been conducted through the Right2Water marches and public meetings held both locally and in Dublin.
And the only bone of widespread contention that’s emerged from those well-co-ordinated and friendly marches has been disagreement over how many people have taken to the streets.
For me, Brendan Ogle’s message has been clear and well made, wherever one stands on the issue.
And if water is, as he said himself, “the lightening rod” for national disquiet with our ruling class, when it comes not only to water, but to homelessness, housing levels, rent affordability and speaking up for the marginalised, then Right2Change must contest the general election.