Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

We have been subjected to a frenzy in the media over the past while about local authority workers standing around doing nothing under the new arrangements with Irish Water. It is a campaign led by a media largely owned by Denis O’Brien, who obviously has a vested interest in the whole Irish Water scenario. The decision to set up Irish Water as a stand-alone entity was based on inaccurate comparisons with Scottish Water.

As was pointed out to the Minister, the reality is that the aforementioned PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis referred to the Irish water pipe network as being 25,000 km in length when it was actually 50,000 km long. It also referred to a workforce in Scottish Water of approximately 1,600 workers, whereas in reality, the number of workers was nearer to 4,000. As a result, spurious comparisons are being made about workers in local authorities currently engaged in managing the water supply being idle under the new arrangement. Is it not true that the Minister's decision to set up Irish Water has more to do with the possibility of privatising the service in the future than any beneficial advantage in remediating or dealing with Ireland's water supply, which task the local authorities were doing quite well and which they would have been doing a lot better had the Government and its predecessors invested in it properly?

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