A chara, – The following is a confession: On July 8th, 2015 at 9.46am, I registered with Irish Water and spent the rest of the day feeling anxious and conflicted.
There was more at stake than the incentive of a €100 conservation grant, which in any case I had missed out on.
By registering with Irish Water I became complicit in a system of resource management that I do not trust to protect and uphold water as a collective good.
Since I am now complicit in what I disagree with, what is to be my redress? And am I alone? The writer Simone Weil reminds me that “If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale . . . we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, ‘that fugitive from the camp of conquerors’.”
I have realised that what is at stake is a deeper understanding of what we, as a collective of strangers and friends living on an island at the edge of Europe, hold in common as a collective good and of shared value to each of us.
Water is one such collective good. It seems clear to me that, in Ireland, how we think about, look after and provide access to this collective good is in a state of crisis.
It seems clear that water needs constitutional protection. Perhaps this would help to add weight to the “lighter scale”. – Is mise le meas,
JESSICA FOLEY
North Strand Road,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – I see there are still posters near Glasthule dart station advertising an anti-water charge demonstration for the June 13th, 2015.
Perhaps instead of annoying most of us who feel free water is not a God-given right they might be better off removing their out-of-date posters.
– Yours, etc,
JOE HARVEY
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
