Sinn Féin TD Dessie Ellis has said that Minister Simon Coveney must legislate on the basis of the Oireachtas Water Committee report to abolish domestic water charges for good.

Speaking today, Deputy Ellis said:

“The Oireachtas Water Committee report has laid out the pathway for the abolition of water charges. It is now up to Minister to accept this as he said he would. If the Minister does not accept the report, he is going against the majority, not only on the committee, but of the Dáil. It is also against the will of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who marched for abolition of domestic water charges.

“In the report, domestic water charges are gone, charges for excessive use of water are gone, as is metering. Importantly, there is a provision for a referendum on the public ownership of water; this is what the people want and it is what the government should legislate for. If the Minister is in doubt and will not legislate on the basis of the report, he should look on this Saturday and to the thousands who will be marching in demand that the Government do what they should have done when the Government was formed and domestic abolish water charges.”

Sinn Féin TD Dessie Ellis, speaking in Leinster House this week, called on support for the Sinn Féin motion to set up a truth commission which would establish the truth of what practices took place in Mother and Baby Homes and other institutions and called for other parties to support the bill.

Deputy Ellis said:

“The atmosphere and climate in these institutions was allowed due to this States failure. And let us remember who were in these institutions.; it was young women and children, young girls who, as Austin Clarke in his 1963 poem said, were left to ‘cook, sew, wash, dig, milk cows, clean stables and, twice a day, giving their babes the teat’.

“There have been many failures over the years in relation to how this State has dealt with the legacies of abdicating its responsibilities for the welfare of mothers and babies to religious organisations. The lack of overview and regulation, the failure of addressing concerns raised over the years as to what was happening in these homes and when it became more than apparent that there was serious abuses occurring and had occurred, the state stood frozen, silently wringing its hands and muttering platitudes while still doffing its cap to the religious who successfully evaded answering or taking responsibility for the actions of its members who carried out these abuses.

“At this moment,  the State has to date failed to initiate a meaningful process that would help obtain the truth for survivors, nor has it provided a suitable forum that would allow the full story of these institutions and the system that underpinned them to be made public. Considering the long line of failure in regards to these institutions, we are introducing this Private Members Bill calling for a truth commission to be established to allow the state to break that cycle of failure and start the process of a truthful discourse of a shameful past.”