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.