Is Stormont right to say no to water charges for another three years?

Mar 06, 2013, 09:42 AM

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No water charges for Northern Ireland - for at least another three years. That was voted through at Stormont yesterday. Direct household water charges here have been on the agenda for the best part of 10 years. But our MLAs and Ministers keep saying no. Charges won't be coming until 2016 at the earliest. But there's a cost to that. Stormont is going to have to keep subsidising NI water's operations. Official figures show this subsidy will come to over £800 million over the years - that's money that could be spent elsewhere. Paddy Meenan is from the We Won't Pay campaign, which opposes water charges and blogger and commentator Jeff Peel discuss it.