The Great Irish Water Fiasco

August 15, 2015 "It makes no sense to spend hundreds of millions of euro metering a leaky system"  - Brendan Howlin 2011 (before he became Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform)  Like most people in the developed world we have become mesmerised by the word “conservation”. Unfortunately, here in Ireland, we have applied it to water with the same enthusiasm as others have applied it to endangered species, oil reserves, tropical forests and to water resources in California.  When it comes to water conservation, we are transfixed to the point where most people fail to apply any rational thought to the reasons for conserving, the consequences of conserving, the ‘benefits’ of conserving, or the cost of conserving.     Of course water conservation is a good thing, even here in Ireland. However, the only reason we have in Ireland for limiting water usage is to save money. That reason has either been forgotten or there is a misplaced assumption t...

September 8, 2015 Some years ago, while staying with friends in Oman, we were taken on a day-long tour in our friends’ SUV. At one point we pulled into a filling station and I was asked by one of our hosts to pay for the petrol. I thought this rather odd but went along with it and was pleasantly surprised to find that the total cost of a full tank was around €8. In fact the reason I was asked to pay was to demonstrate just how cheap petrol was in Oman. Environmentalists will probably be horrified at this story but the point I am making is that Oman has a government which accepts that its own citizens should be the first to benefit from the country’s natural resources. Contrast that with Ireland where we have a government which sees our most plentiful natural resource as an opportunity to extract more taxes from its people. Here in Ireland water is a free commodity, it is a plentiful commodity, often we have too much of it. We have as much water today as we had 50 years ago...

September 15, 2015 Water is not a scarce resource in Ireland. Water is a valuable resource but it only becomes valuable if we actually use it. Time and again we have to listen to politicians, Irish Water executives, environmentalists, journalists, chat show hosts, and the writers of “letters to the editor” refer to water as a “scarce resource” . Sadly those whose job it is to make life difficult for our politicians, by interviewing them on radio and television, never challenge this assertion. Water is not a scarce resource in Ireland, a look out of the window on most days will confirm that fact. If water is scarce in certain areas it is because the powers that be have failed to arrange for its movement from where it is plentiful to where it is needed. This failure is not the result of a lack of resources. Dublin’s water problems could have been resolved for generations to come with the money wasted on installing domestic water meters. Water is a valuable resource, w...

September 27, 2015 Most of us like to believe that we are interested in the environment. We are concerned about global warming, we worry about the destruction of the rain forests, we decry the accumulation of plastic waste in the sea, we wouldn’t dream of dropping litter on the street or dumping an old television in a secluded rural area, we faithfully segregate our recyclables, we would drive an electric vehicle if we could afford it, we argue in favour of wind, wave and solar power. Unfortunately, some of us are equally passionate about the need for water conservation in the mistaken belief that that is also an environmental issue. Of course we don’t like to see plastic bottles on our beaches, litter on our streets, or fly-tipping in the countryside but for the most part we rely on the experts to tell us what behaviour is environmentally sound and what is damaging. We couldn’t stand up in a lecture hall and explain the cause and effect of global warming; we can’t give persona...

October 6, 2015 In an earlier blog I listed ten mistakes that turned the establishment of Irish Water from a good idea into a total disaster - a disaster that created huge divisions in Irish society and placed a heavy financial burden on the Irish taxpayer. I didn’t go into much detail on the mistakes so perhaps I should elaborate. Lack of meaningful debate: At the top of my lists I suggested that a lack of meaningful debate was the prime cause. The necessary legislation was pushed through the Dáil in record time with little input from Government backbenchers or opposition TDs. The lack of debate extended to the media which persisted in treating the matter as a black and white issue – should householders be obliged to pay water charges or should the cost of water continue to be covered by general taxation? At no time did the question of how payments would be calculated – usage or a flat rate per house – receive any media attention. Similarly the media never qu...