MARY LOU MCDONALD has suggested that the Anti-Austerity Alliance (AAA) will abandon people who boycott their water charges when they face possible sanctions.
The Sinn Fein deputy leader said that her party will not be advocating a ‘don’t pay’ policy for people facing Irish Water bills in January despite the AAA, of which the Socialist Party is a member, calling for an outright boycott of the new charges.
The recent Dublin South-West by-election, where the AAA candidate Paul Murphy beat Sinn Féin, was widely viewed as a referendum on water charges with the AAA’s ‘don’t pay’ stance resonating with many voters.
But McDonald told TheJournal.ie that the Socialists ran their campaign “on the basis of essentially a slogan” and suggested, based on previous experience with bin charges, that people may be abandoned by the AAA when it comes to possible sanctions for not paying their bills.
“Take the bin charges, I still have, in my home area of Cabra and the inner city, people who come to me who are still paying back those bills,” she said.
“And let me tell you this, you see the people who said to them: ‘Don’t pay, don’t pay?’ They are nowhere to be seen now and there was a similar experience in respect of the household charge, a similar experience in respect of the property tax.”
Watch out for more from a wide-ranging interview with Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald on TheJournal.ie tomorrow.
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