WATER, AS everyone knows, is essential to sustain life. Its provision to the population is, therefore, the most fundamental function of public authorities. At present, water services in the State are provided by 34 city and county councils, whose “good track record” in this vital area has been acknowledged by Minister of State Fergus O’Dowd (FG), particularly in coping with the severe weather we experienced over the past two winters. Indeed, one of the obvious strengths of the current regime is local authorities are able to mobilise personnel on the ground to deal rapidly with any emergency.
Yet the Government now plans to dispense with their services by setting up a State company, Irish Water, to take control of the entire sector, from the provision of drinking water to the treatment and disposal of sewage – in line with one of Fine Gael’s pledges in its election manifesto last year. Within three months, accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were appointed to “undertake an independent assessment of the transfer of responsibility for water services . . . to a water utility” and to recommend the “most effective assignment of functions . . . for delivering high-quality competitively priced water services to customers.”
One of the PWC report’s findings was that investment in the sector had been “constrained” by the dependence of local authorities on the exchequer for capital funding. Thus, despite some €600 million being provided annually, there is currently a backlog of approximately €500 million for “essential projects”. Whose fault is that? Certainly not the local authorities. Their only other source of revenue at present is from non-domestic users, including many large industrial installations such as Intel. However, they might make more effort in collecting the money due; as the report notes, the collection rate of 52 per cent is “particularly low” by international standards.
It has been well flagged that we will all have to pay for water in the near future – once a crash programme of installing meters for every house and apartment in the State is completed, probably in 2014. This is right and proper, as charges must be related to consumption – just as they are for gas or electricity. A flat rate would be inequitable and would offer no incentive to conserve water. Much remains to be worked out about how Irish Water would operate, but if it does take over from the local authorities, it must be made fully accountable to the Oireachtas.