Top DUP figure speaks out against water charges in Northern Ireland – but says NI Water is ‘struggling’

Former farming minister Edwin Poots was speaking after the Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris revealed he is considering the idea.

Mr Heaton-Harris made the comments as part of a broader announcement, in which he declared he was stepping in to draw up a budget for Northern Ireland in the absence of a government in Belfast.

He voiced annoyance at the fact he was having to do this, and lambasted the long-term "failure" of Northern Ireland's leaders to manage public finances properly, despite getting 21% more per head than other regions via the block grant from London.

All in all, he indicated that Tory patience is now threadbare when it comes to the Province's fiscal problems.

During his message to the Commons, Mr Heaton-Harris said: "We will work to put Northern Ireland's finances on a sustainable long-term footing.

"That means we will need to consider wide-ranging options for revenue-raising…

"Amongst the options we will examine will be water charges and/or increasing income from regional rates".

The erstwhile finance minister, Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy, denounced the idea of water charges as soon as it was raised on Thursday.

Meanwhile People Before Profit, a cross-border party which had a prominent role in fighting such charges in the Republic, pledged it would be met by “mass resistance”.

On Friday, Mr Poots was pressed about it on Stephen Nolan's BBC show.

He said while there were "affordability issues for the wider public" with water charges, that has to be weighed against the need to shore up the "struggling" NI Water, which runs the country's water supplies.

Overall, asked outright if NI does need water charges, Mr Poots said: "I'm not convinced that we do.

"Because there are other opportunities for NI Water, including the mutualisation of the organisation, that would enable them to have borrowing powers they don't currently have."

He also said he would not be "dictated to by a Conservative government that privatised the water infrastructure across in GB" - a move which led to "failure after failure".

But unless a devolved government is resurrected, London intends to make the big financial decisions for NI, so local politicians may not have a choice.

Mr Poots maintained however that the DUP is "not going to welch" on its pledge to solve the problem of the Protocol before restoring devolution.

Water charges have long been controversial on both sides of the Irish border.

A huge campaign was mounted against their introduction in the Republic in 2013/14, including a widespread boycott, causing the charges to be abandoned about two years later.

In Northern Ireland, non-domestic users (mainly farms, but businesses too) already pay for the water they use and sewage they discharge.

But domestic water and sewage is paid as part of householders' rates payments to local councils.

In 2007 it was reported that the then-Labour government was using a promise to keep NI free of water charges as an incentive to pressure the DUP and SF into government.

According to the Irish Times, the water bills were set to start at £150 per year, rising to about £400-£450 by 2010. They were not implemented.

More from this reporter:

> Chris Heaton-Harris savages Northern Ireland's political leadership saying 'you get 21% more per head than other regions yet failed to make public finances work'