An all-party agreement that the Irish public deserves to be spared user charges for public utilities is never a good sign.  The return of good-time politics, fuelled by an unexpected surge in tax revenues, recalls the remarkable speed with which parties of right, left, and centre abandoned plans to charge domestic users for water in 2014. They bolted in lockstep as the public finances began to stabilise following the emergence from the IMF/EU rescue and a surprise by-election win for a “free water” candidate in Dublin Southwest.  Charging households for water has since disappeared from the agenda of all parties,…

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