Talk to Eurostat

Eurostat would need to be very incompetent – or politicised – not to treat the “grant” as government support for Irish Water.
The Water Conservation Grant is such a blatant attempt to defraud the Market Test that I’m sure that some/many have made appropriate noises in the direction of Eurostat.
If the "grant" is seen for what it really is, Irish Water should fail the Market Test - and stay on the government books.

I decided to send my own input.
The response that I was expecting would be a form of “We can not comment as the matter is in process”
Nevertheless, a response would be evidence that they had read at least one input calling attention to the attempted fraud.

I submitted my comment on the general citizen -> EU form at http://europa.eu/europedirect/write_to_us/index_en.htm
EUROPE DIRECT Contact Centre

Subject: ESDS/EUROSTAT re Irish Water Market Test
Enquiry: ( 1800 characters of wisdom in a field allowing for 2000 )

I got an immediate auto-response, assigning a case number.
The following working day I got discouraging news, which read in part:

“Based on the information provided, we are not exactly sure which Eurostat dataset that after your opinion does not have appropriate statistical information from Ireland.”

One would have thought that my Subject - ESDS/EUROSTAT re Irish Water Market Test – might have been a clue for them, but hey! foreigners. What can you do?

Clearly, I was missing some magic juju keywords that would get my words of wisdom past the gatekeepers and to the eyes of Eurostat.

I contacted the offices of Nessa Childers MEP and described my mission plus the response.
The upshot of that was that they made a submission on my behalf - no doubt worded to be more digesible to the eyeballs than was my own more robust attempt.


That submission - by email - read:

Subject: Irish Water PLC Market Corporation Test   Query- Nessa Childers MEP

Dear Sir/ Madam,

I would greatly appreciate your assistance regarding concerns which have
been raised to me by an Irish citizen, Mr. Brian Walsh.


 Mr. Walsh has a series of observations regarding the Market Corporation
Test being undertaken by Eurostat regarding Irish Water PLC, Ireland's new
national water utility, that is now responsible for providing water
services throughout Ireland.


 *The Irish Government has announced the introduction of a €100 Water
Conservation Grant:*

http://www.water.ie/help-centre/questions-and-answers/are-there-affordability-measures-for-vulnerable-customers/

 This grant will be made available only to those households that have
registered with Irish Water PLC (this would also include households who
will not have to pay for a water supply/ waste water removal due to group
water scheme membership or through having a private well).

 http://www.water.ie/billing-and-charges/charges/

The Irish Government cites that cost to households will be as follows:

1.  **For households with one adult the cost cited by the Irish Government is €1.15 per week.*
   
   To achieve this amount the following calculation applies:
   €160 annual Irish Water PLC charge, less €100 Government Water Conservation Grant equals €60.00.
   The annual charge of €60 (after inclusion of Water Conservation Grant) when divided by 52 weeks equals a weekly charge of €1.15
2.  **For households with two of more adults the cost cited is €3.07 per week.*
   To achieve this amount the following calculation applies:
   €260 annual Irish Water PLC charge, less €100 Government Water Conservation Grant equals €160.00.
   The annual charge of €160 (after inclusion of Water Conservation Grant) when divided by 52 weeks equals a weekly charge of €3.07.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/new-water-charges-plan-maximum-cost-will-be-3-per-week-1.2007226


 *Irish Water PLC will invoice households for €160 or €260 annually however
each household that has registered with Irish Water PLC will receive a
grant of €100*.


 The awarding of the Water Conservation Grant is intrinsically linked to
registration with Irish Water PLC- a non-registered household will not
receive this grant.  To date the award criteria is solely that a household
is a registered customer of this Public Limited Company.  To date no water
conservation criteria have been attached to the award of this Grant.


 The Irish Government through the Irish Department of Social Protection
will now administer the awarding of this €100 grant to registered customers
of Irish Water PLC annually thereby reducing the water charges to
households but only after these households have paid the gross changes to
Irish Water PLC.


 *Can Eurostat formally confirm if the Irish Water Conservation Grant and
the awarding thereof is included within the ongoing Market Corporation
Test.*

I would greatly appreciate your assistance regarding this matter and await
your response.


 Nessa Childers MEP
European Parliament
60, Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels
Belgium

www.nessachilders.ie

They got a response on the same day:

Subject: RE: Irish Water PLC Market Corporation Test Query- Nessa Childers
MEP

Dear Ms Childers,

Unfortunately, as a matter of principle, Eurostat cannot comment on
operations which are the subject of ongoing bi-lateral exchanges with
Member States.

Best regards
----------------------------------------------------------
Eurostat DG-02/Press Office
BECH A4/121
Luxembourg L-2920
Tel (352) 4301 35098
http://twitter.com/EU_Eurostat

The response was as expected, and perfectly reasonable.
Job done. My purpose was to have a formal record of at least one person explicitly calling foul.

The core question was

*Can Eurostat formally confirm if the Irish Water Conservation Grant and
the awarding thereof is included within the ongoing Market Corporation
Test.*

 The response was not an answer, but it does confirm that the question was seen - and that Eurostat are on notice that the question arises.



Added on 22nd April, 2015:
I've seen a Department of Social Welfare claim that the Water Conservation Grant "to the fuel allowance, which is also paid by the Department of Social Protection and does not form part of the revenue of energy companies".
That is a completely invalid comparison. The fuel allowance is for certain people on Social Welfare and is means tested. It is not offered to all households with the sole condition being that they register with a coal merchant.

Government pushing back dates for application and payment

In the previous post (below) I mentioned a potential train-crash when the DSP's online Grant Application system is turned on.
The original plan was to have it onlne in August 2015 - with the "grant" being paid in September.
The watergrant.ie site is now saying:

"You will be able to apply online for your Grant on this website from late August to early October 2015."

 If over 1 million try to access the website when it's turned on, the thing will melt. The call entre will quickly follow that.
They may be planning to try and spread the load by using a letter (well ok, about 1.3 Million custom letters at a cost of €? ) to spread the load over 2 or 3 months, much as they are doing with initial bills.

"Irish Water will be writing to you to give you two important numbers which you will need to apply for your Water Conservation Grant. These numbers will be:

• WPRN (Water Point Reference Number) - a number specific to your dwelling;
• Irish Water Account or Registration Number - a number specific to you as the person who has registered with Irish water."

Don't be surprised if the dates above turn out to be 'fluid'. At the very least, in a mad scramble, 31st August counts as "late August" and October 15th is less than half-way through., so "early".
Some/many people will have received three Irish Water bills before they get to even apply for a "grant" that Enda keeps confirming as intended to be assistance to pay those bills.

“The Government, having listened very carefully to people,
   set a charge of €1.15 per week or €3.”

Those charges are Nett of the grant.
The capped charges - set reduced for the time being - are €3/week for a single adult and €5/week for 2 or more adults.

Take Enda at his word (just for this mind you!)
Even if you are going to pay:

1. Pay only €40 against a €64 Quarterly bill, €15 against a €40 bill, OR
2. Pay nothing until you get the "grant"

The whole thing might collapse - as it deserves to.
You'll feel silly if you just rolled over and paid whatever was demanded. By paying, you are validating an incompetent and grossly wasteful omnishambles.

Water Conservation Grant and Irish Water - shorter version

Water Conservation Grant  -- Your Quick Guide

Mass protests scared the government into a climb-down on water charges.
They then came up with the minimum annual charges that might still give Irish Water enough revenue to make it look like a viable commercial entity. Fixed (capped) bills of €260 for 2 or more adults,  €160 for a lone adult.
They still had a problem:

• They felt that even these lower charges would not be accepted by the masses.

Someone had a brainwave.
Pay €100 a year per household direct to Irish Water – to reduce what the customer pays to €160 or €60.
They still had a problem:

• 1.5 Million households by €100 ( €150Million ) would be government support for Irish Water – very clearly demonstrating that the company is not a viable commercial entity.

So disguise the €100s as grants to households. Call them Water Conservation Grants.
Forget that this might be the first grant in history that required absolutely no proof that it was used for the stated purpose.
They still had problems:

• No system existed to process the grant applications and pay the money. Being a grant, people would have to apply to the department for the grant, have their details recorded and verified, and then paid.
• If it’s a Water Conservation Grant – and absolutely not a scam to feed disguised government budget into Irish Water’s revenue – it has to be available to everybody, and not just Irish Water customers.
• There could be 0.5 million additional houses with their own or group water and waste services. They would have to get the grant as well.
  We’ve gone from 1.5 million potential applicants to 2 million. 
• The money to pay the grants had to come out of some government department budget. The grants would cost €150 Million to €200 Million -- a year.
• That’s €200Million for grants and a number of €Millions to create and staff a system that could process up to 1.5 to 2 million applications, validations and payments over a short timescale.

They dreamed up a totally unexpected/unplanned  €130 Million as an overall budget for the Water Conservation Grants.
The cost of creating the grant system and staffing it within DSP is estimated at 2% to 3% of the €130 Million. That’s €2.6 Million to €3.9 Million. They’re not sure. Their best highly-paid IT and HR consultants think it might be at least €2.3 Million and maybe even half that again on top. Let’s say it’s €3Million.
That would leave €127 Million in the budget to cover the actual grants.
That’s interesting.

Early in 2015, Irish Water claimed that ‘nearly a million’ households had registered with them for services, and 0.23 Million additional households with own services had registered.
That would make for nearly 1.23 million grants totalling €123 Million.
That leaves €4 Million in the budget to pay grants to households that sign up before the July deadline.
That’s just 40,000 grants before that budget is blown.

40,000 might be the number of households with own services that have not signed up yet – waiting in the long grass to see how things are heading.
On top of that, there are about 500,000 households on public water and services that have not signed up yet.
It’s lucky for the government that those households have not signed up with Irish Water yet. That would exceed the budget by  about €50 Million a year.

But oopsies !! …

1. Irish Water are reportedly spending €650,000 on TV and radio advertising to convince everybody to sign up.
2. Government are threatening people with penalties and seizures from wages/pensions/welfare if they don’t sign up.

• It's like a death-wish.

Whether or not the remaining households sign up with Irish Water, there is a massive train crash coming down the tracks.

In August/September 2015, the DSP is going to turn on its online Water Conservation Grant application system

• At least 1.23 million households will be hitting it to get the €100 they’ve been promised. Potentially, there could be nearly 2 million households. The system will collapse under the load.
• People will be ringing the call centre. That will collapse under the load.
• There will be mass outrage. It will consume the nation for months at least.
• These 1.3+ million angry people and their families won’t be “Far Left sinister fringe Shinner won’t pays”. They will be people who signed up for a benefit in good faith, even if some did sp reluctantly.
• It will be a massive clusterf**k.

The government will probably pour more €Millions into the DSP system to beef it up, but there’s no budget left for that. There wasn’t even budget for the system in the first place.
On top of that, they will have to pour in 10's of Millions if people respond to the advertising/threat campaign and sign up.

Waste:

1. €4 Million or so of government budget is being wasted just to run a system to facilitate a fraud.
2. €2.3 Million to €3or4 Million (possibly more - they don't seem to have solid numbers on such houses)  has to be given to non-customers with own/group services in order to make it look like the 'grant' is not the Irish Water support that it actually is. The government had absolutly no initial intention to do that. It was forced on them by the nature of the 'grant' scam.
   I did notice a goverment backbencher fulminating in a Dail debate that the water protesters were trying to deprive rural communities of this wonderful ground-breaking measure that the government were trying to introduce. Yeah. Sure.
3. That's a total of getting on for €8 Million of taxpayer money pissed away just to run a fraud.They are gambling.

The fraud is two-part

1. Try to run a fast one past the EU Market Corporation Test.
   Disguise ‘illicit’ government support of Irish Water by feeding it €130 Million to €150 Million  via the customers - and gifting upto €50 Milliond to 'own services' households
2. Get people to sign up with Irish Water by asserting that water only costs €1.15 a week – “a modest contribution”, “less than a pint”, etc. (a particularly short-sighted line - see below)
   In 2019 at latest, with everyone on the system, restore prices to at least the levels that the €96 Million consultants decided were necessary to make Irish Water viable.

They have a problem:

• Enda Kenny & co are banging on about the charges being “modest”.
  The problem is that €1.15 per week is net of the “Water Conservation Grant”.
  

  Every time Enda says “€1.15 a week” he is broadcasting that the “Water Conservation Grant” is absolutely designed and intended as government support of Irish Water revenues. He is confirming that it is a deliberate attempt at fraud on EU rules.

Oh look!

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/cso-provisionally-puts-irish-water-on-state-books-1.2164485

CSO provisionally puts Irish Water on State books

Irish Water has been provisionally classified as being on the Government balance sheet by the Central Statistics Office, pending a decision by Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.
....
To qualify as being off balance sheet, Eurostat has to agree that more than half of Irish Water’s revenue is commercial. A key issue here will be how it counts the €100 being returned to households through the welfare system, which the Government insists is separate from Irish Water.

Enda, Honey, Listen to me Enda
STOP SAYING "€1.15 per week"
Enda, Enda..That only works if the €100 'grant' is absolutely intended to go to Irish Water.
Enda, Enda That's NET of the grant honey.
Listen honey. Shut the f**k up about that €1.15 thing.
I don't care how many men you meet or how many people ring you up.
Enda, Listen. Stop it!

They have another problem: The "Beat the Cap" scam

• Both government and Irish Water have been asserting that "half the country" will see bills that are lower than the cap.
  If you look at the household consumption volumes that were calculated by the finest consultants that €96 Million can buy, it is clear that this must be impossible.
  

  See  Irish Water Meters - the Conservation Scam

  It will be interesting to see the bills for metered houses.