I join in absolutely rejecting any act of aggression against the Tánaiste, her staff member, any member of An Garda Síochána or any protestor. I am sure she will join with me in acknowledging that, in fact, the protests by hundreds of thousands of people the length and breadth of the country have been marked by their peacefulness, respect, colour and determination. I am sure the Tánaiste will join with me in saying that the acts of a few random individuals do not represent the spirit or intent of the vast majority who have protested.

Yesterday, the Government announced a revised plan cobbled together in response to those very demonstrations. It is an attempt to dupe people into believing that the issue of water charges has been resolved. It is a desperate attempt to bribe people off the protests. Those protests have demonstrated the sharp reality that this lame-duck coalition has lost its mandate.

The Tánaiste seems to have a strange view of the public's anger and demands. Mind-bogglingly, she persists with the farcical line that people have been protesting because they want certainty and clarity. That is nonsense, however, and the Tánaiste knows it.

There are four things that hard-pressed ordinary people can be certain of today: first, that the Government is pressing ahead with water charges; second, that these charges will go in only one direction, which is up; third, that the metering programme will continue and that metered charges are the endgame here; and fourth, that there is still no constitutional guarantee of a right to water.

The Tánaiste made a big deal of the €100 rebate that will be administered through her Department. She seems to be incapable of getting it, however. There are many families who cannot pay any charge whatsoever. Easy payment plans and other methods of extracting this money simply do not cut it.

They cannot wait six months to get back €100; they do not have €100 to give. People did not march looking for capped charges, flat charges or threats of penalties. They did not march to have their landlords turned into water tax collectors or to have unpaid water charges attached to the family home. They did not march for concessions but for abolition. The Tánaiste answered the questions she was not asked and failed to answer the core demand of people the length and breadth of the country.

The Deputy should put a question.

What will it take for the Tánaiste to wake up and listen to what people are saying and scrap these odious and unfair water charges?

I thank Deputy McDonald for her comments and I hope people like her, in positions of leadership particularly, will remove this slur cast on the people of Jobstown and Tallaght by the way the leaders of the demonstration conducted themselves.

By Independent newspapers.

The Trotskyite agitator should go back to Goatstown.

The people of Tallaght and Jobstown are owed an apology and I thank Deputy McDonald for disassociating herself from the extremely damaging behaviour. The people in Jobstown and Tallaght work hard, earn their money and pay their taxes. They do not deserve to be traduced in the way that was done by the organisers of the protest.

Hear, hear.

Their children have ambitions to work and to go to college and not to have the name of Tallaght, or the name of any working-class unit in Dublin, traduced.

Shame.

Deputy Paul Murphy seemed pretty happy to have the Garda Síochána bring him out of the demonstration and taken away safely when it got rougher.

That is not true.

I presume at that point Deputy Paul Murphy put the megaphone back in the boot of his car.

The Tánaiste must get back to Deputy McDonald's question and we must have order for the answer.

I know this is taking extra time but I want to thank Deputy McDonald for dissociating herself and her party from what happened in Tallaght on Saturday. It is not good for anyone in Ireland and not good for the community. It is not about me; it is about the community in Tallaght and Jobstown.

With regard to her question, under the revised package of a fresh start for Irish Water, people in a single adult household charge will pay, net, €1.15 a week. People in a household with two adults or more will pay a net charge of €3 a week. Deputy McDonald speculated about why people marched. I know people who marched and I have talked to a lot of people about the issue. As well as the matters about which the Deputy was talking, they want clean water, they want an end to the spectacle of 42 rivers having raw sewage dumped into them, they want to see a programme-----

They want not to have their child benefit cut.

How about we lock Deputy Paul Murphy in a car for two and a half hours?

They do not want to be charged for wastewater treatment. This Government will charge for a service-----

This is Deputy McDonald's question.

Who elected Deputy Stephen Donnelly leader?

This is the alliance of the Tea Party and Trotskyist. This is a new political party in Ireland. The Tea Party Trotskyists, a homegrown Irish version.

T-trot.

I am sure people love the Tánaiste's witticisms.

Deputy Donnelly is an expert on everything.

This is Leaders' Questions. Time is nearly up.

Deputy Stephen Donnelly knows-----

The Tánaiste should be answering my question.

-----there has been an intense amount of investment, particularly under the previous Government. Fianna Fáil made a lot of investment, as did the local authorities throughout the country through development levies, in water delivery and sewerage systems. Having boundaries for pipes that stop at the county boundary makes no sense.

That is not true.

There was no great achievement with regard to the road programme because, similarly, it made no sense.

Deputy Mattie McGrath is getting his water from Waterford.

They must be putting something in it.

With regard to Fianna Fáil, I acknowledge that when the National Roads Authority brought together previously disassociated county roads investment plans, we got one of the better legacies of the prosperous years, a motorway system that vastly improved the service and usability of our road system.

Anyone who turned left at Paulstown to go to Waterford, as I did over a long period and I am looking at Deputy Ciara Conway, and went into south Kilkenny-----

The Tánaiste has turned right.

-----the road returned to being the roads of previous days because Kilkenny County Council did not care about how people got to or from Waterford. In fairness, when Fianna Fáil and the previous Government invested in the National Roads Authority, we got a motorway that the people of Waterford deserve.

Around the houses.

There is the next Government.

Order please, for Deputy McDonald's supplementary question.

Just as I dissociated myself from that behaviour, I equally disassociate myself from the behaviour of a small number of members of the Garda Síochána, who have been extremely heavy-handed and rough with protesters.

The old enemy.

Members of the Garda Síochána are not the enemies of anyone. They are the guardians of the peace and protesters have a perfect right to be treated lawfully and respectfully and not to be flung against a bollard. This is a limited number of members of the Garda Síochána but we must be consistent in our view that all protesting and demonstration must be absolutely peaceful and peacefully policed.

Does that apply to the assassination of gardaí?

Far from casting a slur on the people of Jobstown and Tallaght, from anyone I know in the Oireachtas there would be only words of positivity for Tallaght. There is no need for anyone to make a grand defence of the people of Tallaght. There is no attack on the people of Tallaght, who are fine people, as are the people of Jobstown. They have as much right as anyone else to protest in respect of water charges.

Not under the Trotskyist.

I do not need to speculate about what people were saying on the demonstrations. I was at them. The Tánaiste glibly says that it is only €1.15 or €3 a week, which it is if people have that in their pockets. I am troubled by the fact the Tánaiste, seeing as she references working class communities across this city and beyond, does not seem to grasp that there are people who do not have any euro or cent at the end of a given week or month with their current bills, never mind water charges. They cannot pay.

I will ask two specific questions and the Tánaiste might give me two specific answers. What about the people who cannot pay? Some of them are the working poor and we all know them so let us not pretend that they do not exist. What about the people who cannot pay? What do they face - penalties and attachments to dwellings? What does the Tánaiste say to them?

Everything was considered in the package of measures announced yesterday. What consideration was given to abolishing domestic water charges? That was, and still is, the demand. Was there a discussion to consider the demand made by so many?

I call the Tánaiste to give a final reply.

She might answer the questions today.

My reply may take slightly longer than usual.

This should not impinge on Technical Group time.

Deputy McDonald made some important comments about An Garda Síochána and I will address them briefly. At these protests there was a small minority of people, and those opposite may know some of them, as they are from a variety of groups. There was virulence in the language directed towards the gardaí and the people against whom people were protesting. This has happened not just to me but to other colleagues and people. The virulence of the language was extraordinary. These are our fellow Irish citizens and the Garda Síochána is tasked with guarding everybody in this State. They do a very good job under difficult circumstances, as they did in Tallaght on Saturday.

There was a provocative and "sexed up" nature in the language used. There was imagery in language relating to women. There were female gardaí present who were fantastic and who managed to stop further assaults on the car I occupied, as I was in two cars at different times. The imagery in the language used by protesters was at times bullying and homophobic when directed at young male gardaí. I have travelled around the world and been in difficult circumstances on different occasions. I was brought up in the centre of Dublin in a very ordinary working class community. I am no stranger to people using robust language but I do not know what is in people's minds when they use the imagery in the language I heard. It is not healthy for young gardaí to have to take it.

If the Deputy is aware, as deputy leader of her party, of cases where she feels the gardaí may have reacted or behaved inappropriately, or other people are aware of it-----

It was on television.

The previous Government established the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC.

It was on "Prime Time".

If the Deputy or people she knows have a complaint, that is the place to go.

Will the Tánaiste answer my question?

There were attempts to damage property and gardaí. For the Deputies' information, the second car I occupied had its windscreen broken.

This is ridiculous.

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle-----

The Tánaiste is talking down the clock again.

We must proceed to the next question.

It is groundhog day.

I am happy to answer the points in the second part of the question.

There is another group to ask a question.

I have a point of order.

Is the Leas-Cheann Comhairle allowing extra time?

I hope the Deputy is not going to accuse us of wasting time. That would be pretty ironic.

We are accusing her of not answering the question.

I appreciate that the Tánaiste wished to make comments on the events at the weekend but she has covered it very comprehensively. I have asked her two questions.

No.

On a point of order-----

Allow the Tánaiste to continue.

I asked about people who cannot pay and the abolition of charges. I want answers to those questions.

Have Standing Orders been changed?

This is Leaders' Questions.

He is the enforcer.

A new leader.

In the case of people with inadequate resources, whether they are at work or depending on social welfare, for the first time since the economy collapsed we have been in a position with the budget this year to have a small or modest social welfare increase targeted at precisely the people about which the Deputy is rightly expressing concern.

Some of them.

If families or individuals have particular needs, as always, the Department of Social Protection will seek to help.

I hope there will be injury time for the Technical Group.

This is as we have done for people with ESB or Bord Gáis debts.

Nothing has been done with community welfare officers.

We want to set in motion a mechanism to support people in meeting their obligations.

That is if they can find a community welfare officer.

The social welfare system has done this for decades and if there are cases-----

There are 500,000 people.

-----where families or individuals have a particular difficulty-----

The landlords will take the water charges from deposits.

The Deputy should stop shouting down the Tánaiste.

Nothing has been done for those people.

-----we can help such individuals and families, as we have done through the decades. The increases in tax savings or take-home pay for people on the average industrial wage will be €8 per week. That refers to somebody on approximately €34,000 and it will come into effect when the employer puts those changes into effect.

What about somebody on €100,000 per year? How much would he or she get?

That compares to the €1.15 or €3 figure for the week for water charges.

What about people on low pay?

I call Deputy Joan Collins.

I hope the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will show some flexibility and allow extra time.

I have great time for Independents.

The Deputy can have half an hour.