Debates about whether we need 50,000 new houses a year, as the Government says, or 93,000, as some analysts say, are arguably pointless: neither total is possible as there simply isn’t the water there to supply them, or to process their waste. Just 30,000 to 35,000 new houses can be supplied each year for the foreseeable future according to Uisce Éireann. Quite the gap.
In 2013, Irish Water – as it was called – inherited a severely neglected water infrastructure system. The average age of a water pipe is about 75 years – double the European average – and leaky as a Government backbencher.
At about 37 per cent, our water leakage levels are among the highest in western Europe due to these ageing underground pipes and a legacy of fragmented ownership of the network with historically variable levels of maintenance. Tralee alone loses 6.5 million litres a day in leaks, enough water for a town twice its size.
Ireland also uses a lot of water compared to the rest of Europe, 1.7 billion litres daily, with domestic usage accounting for two-thirds of this and non-domestic consumers the balance. Uisce Éireann is expecting non-domestic demand in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) to increase by 67 per cent by 2040.
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As in housing, geography matters. While the west and south of the country has more rainfall and better water supplies, it is in the east of the country that demand is intensifying, exactly where rainfall is lower and river systems are smaller. About 80 per cent of our drinking water comes from rivers and lakes with the remainder from groundwater, mostly in rural areas.
The GDA, with 40 per cent of the country’s population, relies heavily on Vartry reservoir and the Liffey, the latter of which supplies 85 per cent of Dublin city’s water. Such a narrow base of water supply means systemic vulnerability in case of drought or peak demand.
At the same time, population growth means that domestic water demand across the country will increase by 26 per cent to 2044.
[ Fixing ‘known’ water system issues will take until 2050 and cost up to €60bn, says Uisce Éireann ]
In the east, the demand for drinking water will increase by 45 per cent to 800 million litres a day in the GDA by 2040, vastly exceeding current capacity. Two-thirds of towns and villages do not have the “infrastructural headroom” to support new development without upgrades, which is essential for rural revitalisation.
We also need to deal with wastewater. More than half of our wastewater treatment plants are not always compliant with their licences, and Ireland has been in continuous breach of various parts of the EU Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive for more than 30 years.
In rural areas, more than half the septic tanks inspected last year failed. Just 1,390 of nearly 500,000 were tested, meaning significant risks for surface and groundwater quality. Various studies have noted evidence of faecal contamination in rural wells.
There are solutions, the quickest of which is to change usage behaviour and the quickest way to do that is to charge for water. That didn’t go down well the last time it was tried. Tánaiste Simon Harris recently promised the Government will not introduce water charges, although he also promised we’d complete 40,000 houses last year. The actual number of new homes completed was 30,330.
There is a plan to charge for “excess” water and wastewater usage (above 213,000 litres per average household annually), but there’s no timeline or legislation yet for its introduction.
Behavioural interventions like awareness campaigns are also useful: more nudge, less sludge. Better planning decisions about where new housing is allowed to integrate water supply and output also have a role. Rainwater and downpipe harvesting should be part of every new house.
Fixing leaks and upgrading existing infrastructure are, however, key.
Uisce Éireann spends €250 million a year reducing leaks from 46 per cent in 2018 and is aiming for 25 per cent by 2030.
The proposed 170km Shannon pipeline to serve the east and midlands will take 350 million litres a day from the Parteen Basin near Birdhill, Co Tipperary. Without this pipeline, there will be no new housing or commercial water connections in the GDA, which will have significant implications for the national economy, the delivery of housing, social equality and sustainable patterns of development.
[ Renters forking out €2,000 per month are paying the price for water charges debacle ]
This will cost money, which goes to the heart of the issue: successive governments, all of which contained parties of the current Government, have repeatedly underfunded water infrastructure, exactly as they have housing, in both instances expecting the private sector to do the heavy lifting for them.
Whereas expensive and volatile private sector reliance has grown exponentially in housing, no private sector involvement in water infrastructure has happened. Maybe no harm. Across the Irish Sea, privatisation of water in England has led to increased shareholder profits and directors’ remuneration, and worse leakage and poorer quality water.
In housing, ministers castigate local authorities for not doing enough at the same time as cutting funding. In water, there are announcements of increased funding, but as in housing, this is not always new funding, but recycled old funding.
Indeed, Uisce Éireann’s chairman recently accused the Government of allowing misleading messages of additional funding to permeate “within Government circles, industry and the general public”, even though there was no additional funding (while politicians simultaneously blame Uisce Éireann for shortages).
Pretend money – particularly annually allocated pretend money – won’t solve our water supply issue.
A wealthy but still penny-wise pound-foolish Government hasn’t made the link between functioning infrastructure and housing output, and indeed climate.
As a result, Ireland is now the geographical manifestation of Schrödinger’s cat: a wet country that is at the same time lacking in water for new housing; a country with numerous energy-hungry data centres, but also a looming potential shortage of electricity for new houses; and more than 15,500 homeless in a country with over 160,000 vacant homes.
You’d have to wonder whether anyone is in charge.
Dr Lorcan Sirr is senior lecturer in housing at the Technological University Dublin
