It will take up to two decades to bring Ireland’s wastewater treatment infrastructure up to European standards, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2023 report on Urban Wastewater Treatment.
Uisce Éireann, the State-owned water utility, says it is doing its best and that the consequences of decades of under-investment in water treatment facilities cannot be remedied overnight.
The utility says it has to focus its resources on priority areas such as the discharge of untreated sewage into rivers, estuaries, lakes and coastal waters. It points to the progress it has made in this area. The number of towns discharging raw effluent fell from 29 in 2022 to 16 last year. The EPA would appear to accept the argument for prioritisation but wants faster progress. Both organisations agree that the case for substantial and sustained investment is unassailable.
Anyone familiar with the history of Irish Water – as Uisce Éireann was originally known – should not be too surprised at this state of affairs. It seems scarcely believable that Ireland only created a national water utility in 2013 at the behest of the IMF, EU and ECB troika. It was done by amalgamating a patchwork of private schemes and chronically underfunded, local-authority-run water and wastewater networks, some parts of which are over 100 years old.
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Opposition to the charges that were supposed to fund Irish Water and fears that it was being set up for privatisation deprived it of political support. It only became a standalone entity in 2023 and its budget is now set by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities.
Last year Uisce Éireann invested €436 million but says multiples of that will be needed over the coming years to bring the network up to standard. Some €1 billion was allocated to the utility in the Budget to support investment. More will probably come from the Apple tax payment and the new Planning Act should speed up delivery times.
It will undoubtedly take many years to reach EU standards – but it should not require two decades.
