Mr. Niall Gleeson:

I thank the Vice Chairman and members for the opportunity to attend the meeting. I am CEO of Irish Water and I am joined by Ms Ryan, head of asset strategy, Mr. Cuddy, head of asset operations, and Mr. Laffey, director of asset management and sustainability. Our written statement is lengthy, so I will summarise it to leave more time for questions and answers.

Under our strategic funding and capital investment plan, Irish Water has delivered significant improvements. We will invest €5.3 billion in water services between 2020 and 2024. We have delivered significant drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, including the Vartry plant to which reference was made in the previous meeting. We sat in on that session and are aware of the issues raised. I foresee wide-ranging questions from members. Reference was made to the Vartry plant and upgrades to Leixlip. We have also done work on Lee Road in Cork and other significant upgrades in wastewater infrastructure.

Over 99% of our drinking water is compliant with regulations. We have reduced untreated sewage discharges nationally by over 60% by volume. That is a significant improvement and relates to many of the untreated agglomerations that have been discussed. We still have a significant amount of work to do but, by 2025, we will have 95% of those treated. Those that are outstanding involve planning issues that we are working through. Our leakage rate is now 38%. It was approximately 50% when we took over. Our target is to be at 25% nationally by 2030, while the target for the greater Dublin area, GDA, which is particularly stressed on the water side, is 20% by 2030. We expect to achieve both those targets.

On the housing side, in 2021 we issued 32,000 offers for connections for new housing units. We are now halfway through 2022 and approximately 18,000 offers have been made so far this year, so we will overtake the figure for 2021. We are delivering significant connections and offers for housing.

We welcome and highlight the critical ongoing work by the Government to secure planning reform. Obviously, we agree that, on the planning side, people need to be able to object and have a say in what happens. However, I refer to the greater Dublin drainage, GDD, project, which is a critical project to complement the work the Ringsend project is doing. We originally got planning for that project in 2019 but have been challenged in the courts. We think the process will take eight years overall on the planning side alone, before we even get started on construction. That level of planning delay cannot continue.

On drinking water quality and supply in the long term, in 2021 Irish Water adopted the framework for its first national water resources plan. This is a 25-year strategic plan that follows a three-pillar approach of use less, lose less and supply smarter. Two of our regional plans have been published, that is, the plans for the eastern midlands and south-west regions, while two further plans for the south east and north west will be published in the coming months. We have had public consultations on these plans and the public and various authorities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the HSE and Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI, have had the opportunity to comment on them. This is research on all the water resources in the country and the examination involves their longevity, the current challenges and the challenges we predict will come with climate change. We have identified the water supply in the eastern midlands region project as being of critical national importance. It is in the national development plan. Currently, 85% of the greater Dublin area is reliant on the Liffey to supply water. Such reliance on a single source creates risk, particularly as the population is expected to increase by 24% by 2044. This project will provide alternative water supplies using water from the River Shannon, but it will also secure supplies along the route, in the midlands, and allow some of the Dublin plants to release water north and south. The project is not just about supply for the GDA.

In the first river basin management plan, prior to the establishment of Irish Water, urban wastewater was listed as the second most dominant pressure on catchment water quality. By the end of the third cycle, we expect it to be the seventh most dominant pressure. It is currently in fourth position in the context of the pressure on water bodies. This reflects significant investment by Irish Water in upgrading infrastructure and optimising operations at wastewater treatment plants. We know we still have challenges, but we are working through them. There are currently 217 significant urban wastewater pressures impacting on 208 water bodies. This equates to 4% of water bodies nationally requiring urban wastewater improvement measures to achieve water framework directive objectives. Works are complete to address urban wastewater problems on 12 water bodies and projects are progressing on a further 61. Another 63 water bodies are due to be completed by 2027 and the remaining 72 assessments are initiated in a rolling program. All current wastewater treatment pressures should be addressed by 2030. Network pressures, particularly in cities, will take considerably longer to address due to scale and complexity.

There has been significant improvement in water quality since 2015. Irish Water performed almost 180,000 individual tests on public supplies last year. The amount of time boil water notices remain in place has reduced significantly. In 2014, notices that were in place for 200 days were considered to be long term, whereas 30 days is now the measure. Last year, Irish Water removed 250,000 customers from boil water notices and 211,000 of those customers had their notices lifted within 30 days. Again, we have challenges but we are making improvements.

Irish Water has built new wastewater infrastructure for 21 towns and villages where no such infrastructure existed, ending the discharge of raw sewage into the environment. We remain on track to achieve the 95% target by 2025.

Irish Water makes every effort to go beyond our regulatory requirements to ensure people are made aware of issues. On water quality issues, we have a reactive and robust system for reporting and dealing with the HSE and the EPA when we are notified of issues. Mr. Cuddy will get into this in more detail. We last appeared before the committee after the incidents at Gorey and Ballymore Eustace. We are trying to remove from the chain the potential for individual mistakes to cause a public health issue. We have introduced our project connect programme. As part of that programme, the top 51 plants in the country are now covered by our 24-7 operation centre, accounting for 2.7 million of the population. We continue to roll that out. We hope to cover the top 70 by the end of the year and the top 100 plants next year. Notably, the top 100 plants cover approximately 86% of the population.

The remaining 14% of the population are covered by about 650 plants so one can imagine the challenge of trying to run oversight over all of those much smaller plants that cover anywhere from 150 to 1,000 people. They are a big challenge, including logistically.