In a nation where water is plentiful, the Irish government’s determination to make citizens pay for it is provoking a storm of protest.

Since 2008, the Irish working class has been forced to foot the bill for the bailout of six insolvent banks after the government took out loans of almost €85 billion from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Seven years of harsh austerity have resulted in homelessness, cutbacks to social services and mass unemployment, sparking the biggest emigration since the mid-19th century.

Between 2008 and 2013, those living in deprivation rose from 13.7 percent to 30.5 percent, according to Ireland’s Central Statistics Agency.

Irate voters kicked out the Fianna Fail-led government in 2011. But what they got was a new government led by an almost identical establishment party, Fine Gail. Despite a pre-election pledge by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore that his party would resist water and property charges, the new Fine Gail-Labour coalition government accepted and began implementing the austerity measures imposed by the bailout agreement.

One of these measures was the establishment of a new public utility, Irish Water, to take from local authorities responsibility for water and begin charging households for their water usage from 1 January 2015. This was widely seen as a Trojan horse for privatisation.

In May last year, environment minister Phil Hogan announced that the average household would pay €240 per year.  Hogan offered a carrot to people with disabilities, carers and the elderly: an allowance of €100 a year. However, those who didn’t pay would have their water pressure reduced.

From the outset, Irish Water was mired in controversy. In January 2014, Dublin City Council manager John Tierney was named Irish Water’s first CEO. Tierney was already on the nose with Dubliners for his controversial support for the Poolbeg Incinerator, an environmental disaster set to cost Irish taxpayers €500 million upon completion. Six months into his appointment, Tierney told RTE that €50 million of Irish Water’s €180 million set-up budget had already been spent on consultants.

Anger mounted further when, in July 2014, Irish Water’s head of communications told RTE’s breakfast show that the corporation would be collecting taxation numbers in preparation for water charges. This deepened concerns that residents were going to be forced to pay their water bills through deductions to wages and pensions.

As water meters began to be installed, protests began to swell. A national coalition, Right2Water, was established, bringing together the radical left, Sinn Féin, centre-left politicians and an extensive network of grassroots groups. The trade unions affiliated to the campaign – the CPSU, CWU, Mandate, Opatsi and Unite – are calling for a referendum to enshrine public ownership of Irish Water in the constitution.

R2W has mobilised five national days of action. Demonstrations in Dublin mobilised 120,000 last October, and at least 80,000 in December and again in March. The December protest was joined by a US delegation from the Detroit Water Brigade – where more than 27,000 homes have had their water cut off for not paying bills.

In an effort to quiet the protests, the government announced a cap on water bills of €160 (A$240) per year for a single-adult home and €260 per year for a multi-adult home, regardless of the means of the occupants, until 2019. However, this did nothing to quell the protests. It was seen as a sign of weakness from the government and held out the possibility that mass protests, and a widespread boycott, could topple the government’s water charges.

On 21 July, as the Irish parliament closed for summer, Irish Water reported that only 43 percent of households liable for water charges had paid their first bill. The 57 percent boycott represents around 860,000 households.

Sinn Féin – a populist and nationalist opposition to the government – has seen its electoral fortunes grow during the years of harsh austerity. It is now the most popular party in Dublin. However, its members of parliament have refused to support the boycott, instead advocating only “legal” avenues for the campaign.

Meanwhile, the left – in particular the Socialist Workers Party-led People Before Profit and the Socialist Party-led Anti-Austerity Alliance – have been at the forefront of the boycott campaign and are gearing up for another national mobilisation on 29 August.

On the eve of the parliamentary recess, the government rushed through “emergency legislation” to force landlords to collect water charges from tenants and to allow courts to garner charges from welfare payments and wages. These anti-democratic measures are unlikely to win the government support as an election looms.

The current water campaign has some important precedents. In 1994, a boycott campaign began against water charges by the Dublin City Council; on the eve of a general election in December 1996, the Labour Minister of the Environment was forced to abolish the charges.

In 2000, a popular uprising defeated the Bolivian government’s attempt to hand control of Cochabamba’s water supply to the US firm Bechtel. Since 2012, a hard-fought campaign has so far defeated measures to privatise two government water utilities in Athens.

Addressing a rally in Dublin in June, Memet Uludag, a member of People Before Profit and the Irish Anti-Racism Network, expressed solidarity with anti-austerity movements around the world. “We say today water is a human right,” she told the thousands-strong rally.

“Black and white, we will unite and we will fight. From Bolivia, to Detroit, to Greece, people have been fighting against cuts, against austerity.”