The Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has claimed that Irish Water staff will either lose their jobs or be redeployed if his party are elected into office in just over a weeks time.
Mr Adams said he is fully committed to completely scrapping the state utility, and all of its employees pensions and redundancies would be worked out on an individual basis. The Sinn Fein leader told RTE’s this week programme: “The principle is very, very clear – scrap Irish Water, scrap water charges. It’s a punitive, unnecessary tax.”
When heavily questioned about the difficulty in abolishing the state utility as their is contracts currently in place with four companies, Mr Adams happily replied a government led by his party would willfully act on the best legal advice.
The Sinn Fein leader told the programme: “We are lawmakers, if we get a mandate we will change the law to serve the common interest.” “Our objective is very, very clear and this is an absolute red line issue – this and the family home tax – we will scrap both of those.”
However Mr Adams had some bad news for voters saying there would be no way to refund people who have already their paid Irish Water bills.