Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 September 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Water Advisory Body: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for not being present earlier but I had to attend another event. I thank the witnesses for the brief presentation. The quarterly reports mentioned by them will be important for the committee's work. I wish to flag a few issues so that when the first of those reports comes in, they might be addressed. One of the big issues, particularly in the context of water shortages caused by weather difficulties recently, is leakage reduction. There has been significant public attention, particularly among the media and others, on leakage reduction and domestic wastewater reduction, which is legitimate and to which I have no objection. One issue we have raised with the Department and Irish Water is the need to address the greater level of leakage in the system, which is on the public distribution system, and in particular, whether the relatively modest targets for tacking leakage within the infrastructure are the most appropriate. Irish Water's capital investment starts to increase significantly over the next number of years. A figure of €777 million is in the programme for next year, €800 million for the following year and €900-odd million after that. When we compare the programme of leakage reduction with what happened recently in London, which is an old city with many of the comparable challenges of infrastructural upgrading, it seems Irish Water's targets are modest. When we put that to the company representatives, they told us that closing down the city centre is a challenge, but not all the leaks are within the city centre. There are large urban areas inside and outside the canals where work could be done. It is important that the witnesses give us a sense of what progress has been made on this and, by way of international comparisons with comparable cities, whether more work could be done.

In respect of cost reduction and efficiency improvements, which, again, are important issues, one of the concerns is that there is a change in the way in which Irish Water is accounting for capital and current expenditure because it is now working within the OECD's defined set of rules. One of the consequences is the fact that certain items that would have previously come under current expenditure such as the relatively small to medium-sized cost for repair of water treatments plants will be classed as capital expenditure because they are subcontracted to private contractors. If we are being presented with current expenditure reductions, it is important that they are genuine reductions and not something that has been transferred to the capital expenditure side for whatever reason.

Regarding procurement, remuneration and staffing policies, when Deputies talk to water engineers in local authorities, there is a value in having that local knowledge within local authorities. These water engineers know the community and the area and have a level of intelligence or institutional memory that is built up over a long period of time. One of the difficulties is that is lost by using subcontractors for regional-based bodies of work in which Irish Water is engaged. People who do not necessarily know the county or region could be in Cork one week, Donegal next week and Dublin the week after that. That is not to say they are not as skilled but they do not have that local knowledge. In respect of staffing policies and efficiency, is there a gain in terms of shifting towards contractors but a loss in terms of local knowledge and information?

In terms of responsiveness and the needs of communities, I agree with Deputy O'Dowd that Irish Water's response to elected Members is good. I am a long-standing critic of Irish Water but I acknowledge that. I hear from many members of the public that they do not get the same response. That may not be the case across the board. It may just be isolated incidents but it would be interesting to know how we determine in respect of the public when they make the call because people often come to us after they have gone to Irish Water or the local authority and not received a response. It would be interesting to look at that.

I am not necessarily looking for comments on those issues, although I would welcome anything the witnesses have to say about them. They are some of the answers we will seek in the first report so if it would be helpful if the witnesses could keep that in mind when they are drafting the report.

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