Editorial: ​If Northern Ireland refuses to implement water charges we need to find other ways to pay for vital water infrastructure

There is nothing less than a financial crisis at Stormont due to political cowardice and bad governance.

As this column noted yesterday, unionists are implicated even though they are far more likely to support some public sector reform and efficiency than nationalists. Nonetheless – partly, in fairness, as a result of the system of mandatory coalition – unionists ​have for years stood alongside Sinn Fein in what is in effect grievance mongering over how much money the UK governments send to Northern Ireland.

Some unionists fairly cite studies saying that Northern Ireland is under-funded, and while there are ways of looking at the statistics that suggest that might somewhat be so, it does not disprove two fundamental points:

First, the staggering generosity of cross party UK governments to the province, not least in lockdown, something one of the largest economies in the world can afford to do, and the Republic of Ireland could not.

Second, the refusal to spend money wisely here.

We report the economist Esmond Birnie today reacting to the Sinn Fein minister Liz Kimmins’ vow that she will not implement water charges in “any form", just one day after the NI Fiscal Council said MLAs need to be on the table. But it is not just Sinn Fein that is opposed to water charges, the other big political party in the coalition, the DUP, is too.

To be clear, this newspaper is not arguing for water charges necessarily. We are saying that if we will not have charges we must be clear about where we will make savings elsewhere to pay for vital water infrastructure. Or how else we will find funds.

Dr Birnie, a vital but almost lone voice of experts based here in NI, dismisses the claim that we already pay such charges through rates: Total rates paid per household “is much less than the sum of council tax plus domestic water charges in England, Scotland, and Wales”.