Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Irish Water: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Bríd SmithBríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am not a member of the committee but I appreciate the witnesses' time. I want to try to tease out two things. One is the question of local authority workers who are the subject of the service-level agreement, SLA. The unions will be in later to talk to us about it. The witnesses say they will save €70 million a year by streamlining this. That would be €280 million for the four years that they are trying to cut short the SLA by, yet, at the same time, they are using many contractors. Our experience as public representatives has been that the cost of those contractors has been very high. The contracting out of metering, for example, cost in the region of €600 million. There was much controversy at the time about the cost of that and how those contracts were awarded, etc.

I would like to tease out how the witnesses balance the use of contractors against the cutting short of the service-level agreement. One of my best friends is one of the most senior people in Dublin City Council's water department and he knows the system inside-out, back-to-front and upside-down. When he goes, much very important knowledge, information and experience will go with him. I know he will not move across to Irish Water because he is like most of those workers who are terrified that their permanency as public servants, their pensions, etc., will not be carried over with them. They have every reason to be worried about that, particularly since the Government does not seem to be giving us a referendum on the question of keeping water in public hands.

I recently had cause to go in-depth into the question of what the witnesses were talking about there, getting the support of elected Members. I had a visit to my office from a contractor with Irish Water asking me if our locally elected representatives, both councillors and Deputies, involved in the campaign about water charges, would be willing to co-operate with Irish Water in an attempt to install meters for all the homes in a certain district metering area, DMA, in Crumlin, to detect leaks. He went into detail, showed me plans and so on. My argument to him, which I would like to put to Mr. Grant, is as follows. If one wants to win the confidence of public representatives and to work with people to change the nature of how we treat water in this country and work with each other to ensure this precious resource is protected, to stop the leaks etc., would it not be wise in the first place for Irish Water to fix all the leaks that it can which exist outside of people's homes, not those at their homes? That would include leaks across the network, including under main roads. Mr. Grant mentioned a figure of 70 km of mains. I do not know if that is for Dublin or everywhere. Would it not be wise to fix those first and then go to the public to point out the marvellous job done. Instead of 36% leaking as it is currently, Irish Water could reduce it to 7% which is, according to its own statistics, roughly the amount of leakage that it relates to household use.

Instead of that, Irish Water is coming into areas, fixing big leaks on Bangor Road and Aughavanagh Road and, at the same time, asking us as public representatives to work with communities to say that it is okay for Irish Water to put a meter outside houses for ten days to suss out if there is a leakage in the house or not. What do the witnesses think ordinary people will immediately perceive as being attempted here? The attempt here is not just to accept the leaks, which I accept is bona fide, but also to try to establish who can be billed for excessive usage when Irish Water starts billing them next year. There is a problem.

The Water Services Act, which informs what Irish Water determines is excessive usage, is deliberately ambiguous. It is deliberately ambiguously designed so that we do not know or cannot determine what excessive usage is or how Irish Water will determine who has excessive usage. A programme such as Irish Water is proposing for Crumlin would absolutely not get people's trust. I suggest that Irish Water needs to get the trust of the people and their elected representatives before it embarks on trying to meter homes again. That is lethal and it will certainly not win the hearts and minds of people in bigger communities, certainly in Dublin. I imagine it is the same in Cork.

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