UPDATE:
As below, Mr. Joe O'Toole was appointed to head up the commission to examine Irish Water and make recommendations on how public water should be paid for in the future. Joe hadn't even his bum snug on the seat when he gave a rambling interview to the Irish Examiner. Among his other outbursts in that piece he explained that the commission was designed to ‘find a solution that will have enough sugar on it to make the medicine go down.'
This alone confirms what many of us suspected, namely that the government’s intention is to use the Commission to force through charges while appearing to be blameless themselves.
It was so transparent as to be childish and it wasn't long before opponents of water charges were hopping up and down and shouting for Big Joe's head. Fianna Fail duly delivered it on a platter by telling an already jittery Enda Kenny that they now couldn't support the commission and we all know that could have meant another trip to the ballot boxes. So Big Joe announced his, ahem, resignation overnight.
Still, we can't relax folks. That commission is stuffed with enough green tree-huggers and sharp business types that must feel they almost have their hands in our pockets at this stage. Don't be one bit surprised then when this so-called impartial commission announces that the 'polluter must pay,' and I suspect even now their draught report for the public is already written. They have between now and December to correct the spelling mistakes because they have little else to be doing.
It would be interesting to know just how much of our money these puppets are getting for doing fuck-all? They're not in Dublin out of the kindness of their hearts.