Opposition Stage Collective Dáil Walkout as Gov Guillotines Water Services Bill 2013

Cookie_Monster

Phoebas wrote: »

How is greater than expected consumer conservation of water underperformance by Irish Water? If water metering leads to much more water being conserved then that would be a positive outcome!

not for IW whose income would be greatly reduced.

Phoebas

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

not for IW whose income would be greatly reduced.

And the proportional cost of supplying water would be greater ... hence the possible higher proportional cost being passed on to consumers.

JRant

Phoebas wrote: »

And the proportional cost of supplying water would be greater ... hence the possible higher proportional cost being passed on to consumers.

No, the costs would not change, how did you come to that conclusion?

Demand changes and with it the unit price should vary accordingly. Less demand should drive the price lower to intice consumers to buy more. However if reports on the radio this morning are to be believed not only can they raise prices when demand falls but also when the supply falls, due to drought etc. sure how can they lose, it's a racket if you ask me.

creedp

JRant wrote: »

No, the costs would not change, how did you come to that conclusion?

Demand changes and with it the unit price should vary accordingly. Less demand should drive the price lower to intice consumers to buy more. However if reports on the radio this morning are to be believed not only can they raise prices when demand falls but also when the supply falls, due to drought etc. sure how can they lose, it's a racket if you ask me.

A racket is right. This makes a mockery of the argument made by many that this was all about conserving a scarce natural resource and that spending money on meters would result in those who waste water eing charged more while those who conserve water could miniminse their water charges. Another fine quango with a can't lose outlook .. €100m in consultancy in 2014 anyone!

Larbre34

This is the HSE #2, plain and simple.

We know now what the consultants costs were in '13, those costs are continuing to accumulate.

Irish Water have advertised hundreds of posts in the 40-100k range to staff this quango. At the same time they have forced Service Level Agreements on the County Councils to carry out the SAME WORK they were carrying out before, only now as agents to this monster in the making and the SLAs last for 12 YEARS!!!!

If the objective here was at the beginning to improve the water supply infrastructure, then the Govt/Dept should have given it over to the National Roads Authority or Railway Procurement Agency, who between them have massive professional expertise in infrastructure engineering and who although still in paid existence are at this moment doing sweet **** all.

Not a single home should pay a bill when it arrives in 2015, furthermore the commercial sector should stop paying. This whole thing is such a breathtaking black hole and as bad as any quango idea in the FF/PD era that it shouldnt just end Phil Hogan, it should end this Government.

Theyll say of course that its a promise to the Troika to charge for water, I can only guess the Troika might raise an eyebrow or two at the waste of money involved in the choice of method before the bills are even issued.

Sierra Oscar

Why didn't the government release these consultancy payment figures prior to the passing of this bill?

Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Independents and even TD's from the government backbenches have been trying for months and months to get these consultancy payment figures, but the government was keeping it all under wraps. What a farce, you can be sure that there will be plenty of more revelations judging by the way the government have tried to shutdown this debate.

Phoebas

JRant wrote: »

No, the costs would not change, how did you come to that conclusion?

Demand changes and with it the unit price should vary accordingly. Less demand should drive the price lower to intice consumers to buy more. However if reports on the radio this morning are to be believed not only can they raise prices when demand falls but also when the supply falls, due to drought etc. sure how can they lose, it's a racket if you ask me.

Why the hell would you want to entice people to use more of a valuable resource than was necessary? - that doesn't make any sense at all.

Phoebas

JRant wrote: »

No, the costs would not change, how did you come to that conclusion?

Irish Water need the capacity to produce water based on expected usage. If the actual usage is lower than expected the costs of producing the water remains the same, but revenue from the water will be down.

So the actual cost of producing the water doesn't change but the proportional per unit cost goes up.

JRant

Phoebas wrote: »

Why the hell would you want to entice people to use more of a valuable resource than was necessary? - that doesn't make any sense at all.

I'm talking about it from an economic point of view. When a company has a surplus of stock what usually happens is that they have a sale (i.e. Drop their price) to offload this stock.

Also why on earth should people be penalised for using less of this valuable resource? This makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

It smacks of the golden circle all over again. O'brien's 'Sierra' group hovering around in the backround waiting to cream as much of this scheme as they can get their hands on.

JRant

Phoebas wrote: »

Irish Water need the capacity to produce water based on expected usage. If the actual usage is lower than expected the costs of producing the water remains the same, but revenue from the water will be down.

So the actual cost of producing the water doesn't change but the proportional per unit cost goes up.

Thats not what you said originally though. Either way it's not relevant as profit is a function of revenue - costs. If the cost remains the same but the revenue decreases, this leads to a reduction in profit or a loss.

Larbre34

JRant wrote: »

I'm talking about it from an economic point of view. When a company has a surplus of stock what usually happens is that they have a sale (i.e. Drop their price) to offload this stock.

Also why on earth should people be penalised for using less of this valuable resource? This makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

It smacks of the golden circle all over again. O'brien's 'Sierra' group hovering around in the backround waiting to cream as much of this scheme as they can get their hands on.

So called 'Public Goods' have a different economic profile to private merchandise and cant be compared. The public private partnership model, such as on motorways guarantees income to a concessionaire in return for them taking on all the cost and time of design build and operation. And like on Motorways, if the level of usage drops, the private utility will be compensated up to the guaranteed usage value, either by lump payments from the state or an allowance to increase charges.

Incidentally, the cost for Sierra and their sub-contractors to install the meters is NOT included in that €50million, which was purely for professional services. The astronomical cost of meter installation will be a later chapter in this tragedy.

For Reals

Phoebas wrote: »

How is greater than expected consumer conservation of water underperformance by Irish Water? If water metering leads to much more water being conserved then that would be a positive outcome!

A business, generally, rates how it performs based on the profit it makes or does not make. In tracking this they set forecasts, based on projected turnover. If Irish Water find they are underperforming, (which means not creating the expected profit) they may be given free reign to hike up fees to increase their profit margin.

On your other unrelated point, yes water conservation is a good thing. Maybe with all the water saved, they'll lower the cost to the public from time to time

Larbre34 wrote: »

So called 'Public Goods' have a different economic profile to private merchandise and cant be compared.

I would argue there are less and less differences by the day. What would be the difference between a semi-state Irish Water and, as I bet it will eventually become, a Private Irish Water to you and I? Do we see any noticeable profit in out pockets? Are we asked to vote in any kind of AGM? Do we get a say in the appointment of the board who runs it? Are other taxes lowered to compensate for this new tax, as some of our tax was always going towards water supply/maintenance?

It's a new tax. The environment/Water is the excuse. The government gives no more of a flying **** towards water conservation as they do 'Ear to the ground' losing money in regards the Broadcast tax or 'Little house on the prairie' in regards to your home tax, (I can't think of any apt analogy for the home tax as its simply a mugging).

If, every cent gleaned from this goes 100% back into the system in an effort to reduce charges on a fluctuating basis, where practical, if after one or two weeks of Sun we don't have a water shortage in a country with as much rain as Ireland gets...I might turn around on the whole thing, but that ain't gonna happen.
In about ten or fifteen years, we'll sell it off after the tax payer fund the infrastructure.

Cookie_Monster

Phoebas wrote: »

Irish Water need the capacity to produce water based on expected usage. If the actual usage is lower than expected the costs of producing the water remains the same, but revenue from the water will be down.

So the actual cost of producing the water doesn't change but the proportional per unit cost goes up.

cost will not be the same. There's a variable costs to produce and fixed costs to cover. given that they plan to fix all the leaks you are looking at a usage decrease of 40% that needs to be planned for regardless. So costs should drop dramatically once leaks are fixed and revenue per unit actually used will become far higher.

Phoebas

JRant wrote: »

Thats not what you said originally though.

It is.

JRant wrote: »

Either way it's not relevant as profit is a function of revenue - costs. If the cost remains the same but the revenue decreases, this leads to a reduction in profit or a loss.

And a loss to a wholly state owned water company = a loss to the taxpayer.

Phoebas

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

cost will not be the same. There's a variable costs to produce and fixed costs to cover. given that they plan to fix all the leaks you are looking at a usage decrease of 40% that needs to be planned for regardless. So costs should drop dramatically once leaks are fixed and revenue per unit actually used will become far higher.

The is no 'revenue per unit' for water that spills out of leaky pipes

Irish Water will have to produce an amount of water to cover the expected usage and there is a cost to that regardless of if it is used or not. Obviously over time, if usage is lower than expected, they can start reducing their capacity and in doing so reduce the overall cost.
But if there is a circumstance where they produce much more than there is demand for (which could easily happen in the initial years), that cost needs to be made up somewhere. As its a state company, it can either be made up from consumers or by taxpayers.

Banjo String

Phoebas wrote: »

Why the hell would you want to entice people to use more of a valuable resource than was necessary? - that doesn't make any sense at all.

Haven't Oil companies have been doing this for years.

Phoebas

For Reals wrote: »

A business, generally, rates how it performs based on the profit it makes or does not make. In tracking this they set forecasts, based on projected turnover. If Irish Water find they are underperforming, (which means not creating the expected profit) they may be given free reign to hike up fees to increase their profit margin.

Its crazy to judge Irish Water on the amount of water they can flog us like it was a private venture.
If they can encourage people to conserve and lower the overall cost of producing and treating water in the state then that would be a good performance, not an under-performance.

Phoebas

Banjo String wrote: »

Haven't Oil companies have been doing this for years.

You want Irish Water to operate like an oil company.
That's crazy!

Banjo String

Phoebas wrote: »

You want Irish Water to operate like an oil company.
That's crazy!

I do?

I was merely contradicting your statement that

Why the hell would you want to entice people to use more of a valuable resource than was necessary?

Oil is a valuable resource is it not?

Phoebas wrote: »

that doesn't make any sense at all.

It makes sense from a business point of view. Irish Water will operate as a business I presume? Achieve profits and what not?

Yeah?

Fr. Ned

This is fast turning into the biggest quango the state has ever seen.

There will be NO benefit to the Irish people, I can guarantee you that in 10 years there will be the same wastage, the same undrinkable water in some places and the same fat cats leeching off us for doing SFA!

When will Ireland wake up and fight this?

Phoebas

Banjo String wrote: »

Oil is a valuable resource is it not?

It is. That's why people try to use as little of the stuff as possible.

I can't imagine why you would expect a state body to encourage us to use more a valuable resource than we needed.

raymon

Just watching Barry Cowen on RTE condemning Irish Water's budget . What a poor public speaker.

Surely Sinn Fein or Independents could get someone with credibility to condemn these Fianna Fail / government water taxes instead of the FF clowns that signed us up for these in the first place.

micosoft

Fr. Ned wrote: »

Enda's latest quango spends €50 million of our money on consultants in 1 year.

Headed by a serial waster of our tax euro in every position he has worked in, from Galway city council to Fingal county council to Dublin city council/
This guy is on €200,000 PA plus expenses.

€50,000,000.00 on consultants in one year!!!!

The people of Ireland better wake up and wake up fast.

No, no they didn't. The Irish Independent made that up. It is not 50m on consultants.

And his salary is reasonable. Who do you want running our water system? You?


Irish Water paid €50m to setup the IT systems for monitoring, managing, asset managing the Water network + HR, Finance and all the other things major multi billion euro organisations need to function. It includes the costs of:

• Software licences
• Implementation Engineers, Project Managers, testers, systems architects and yes, consultants who have implemented these systems in other countries.

This was all planned and budgeted for as part of the setup of Irish Water and is a once off charge.
It compares favourably to costs incurred by the ESB when setting up their Grid Management system and far less then what many commercial entities spend on IT (banks spending on IT is eye watering).

This is a bull**** story created by a bull**** paper (the indo) and fanned by bull**** politicians (Shane Ross and FF). The irony is that these are the exact same people who would pillorise the management of Irish Water if they didn't have the figures supplied by these systems to hand when they are shouted at appear at Dail committees. Another non story but one that a lot of people seem to lap up...

micosoft

Phoebas wrote: »

It is. That's why people try to use as little of the stuff as possible.

I can't imagine why you would expect a state body to encourage us to use more a valuable resource than we needed.

Look. It's a simple as this.

A water and sewerage system is primarily a fixed cost. There is only a small aspect to it that is variable. In fact, I'd say the variability within the existing system is probably less then 10%

On the other hand, capacity is added in large capex projects (for the sake of this say, in blocks of 20,000 households) minimum. With long lead times (construction etc). So the critical thing is to avoid adding capacity given it's so hard to take it out.

Let's say it costs €1 billion to run a system to supply water and take wastewater from 1.5 million households.

Now let's say each house uses 100 cubic litres per day at 1c a cubic litre (€365 per year).

If they all reduce their usage by say 25%. It still costs €1 billion to run the water system. There is little or no variable element. The exact same number of pipes need to be maintained. Less volume going through treatment facilities but they are fixed installations. I would posit that it's less then 10% of the running cost of those facilities (chemicals, removing of slurry etc).

Therefore you have to increase unit cost to 1.2c per litre to meet the fixed costs.... or it loses money.



Now this is all very hypothetical as it would appear that demand for water is increasing because the NUMBER of households and businesses are increasing. Why else are they talking about piping water from the Shannon?

In all likelihood, we will need to build additional water capacity which means even with people reducing individual household demand, overall demand still goes up. So in all likelihood, water rates going up because of an overall drop in demand is highly unlikely. So really, the strategy is to put a brake on the overall capacity of the network by reducing existing demand to make way for the expansion of new households and businesses increasing demand.

And by the way, you already pay similar charges in a different way - look at your ESB and Gas bills and the size of the fixed charge paying for the grid that gives you electricity/gas. Sometimes worth more then the commodity itself especially during summer when you might not use gas.

Perhaps they should have separated out the network charge then, but it really makes no odds as it's unlikely we will have independent water producers feeding into a grid.

Another bull**** scaremongering story from a media who are seriously failing the state with very disingenuous stories.

Phoebas

Agree with that. Except that hopefully as people try to conserve water when the bills start hitting doorsteps and as they find and fix leaks (metering is going to greatly help them locate leaks) there may be a real decrease in usage in the short term.

Fr. Ned

micosoft wrote: »

No, no they didn't. The Irish Independent made that up. It is not 50m on consultants.

And his salary is reasonable. Who do you want running our water system? You?


Irish Water paid €50m to setup the IT systems for monitoring, managing, asset managing the Water network + HR, Finance and all the other things major multi billion euro organisations need to function. It includes the costs of:

• Software licences
• Implementation Engineers, Project Managers, testers, systems architects and yes, consultants who have implemented these systems in other countries.

This was all planned and budgeted for as part of the setup of Irish Water and is a once off charge.
It compares favourably to costs incurred by the ESB when setting up their Grid Management system and far less then what many commercial entities spend on IT (banks spending on IT is eye watering).

If this is the case, why are they before the PAC next week?

The story didn't come from the independent, it came from the waster's radio interview.

You have checked his record in the councils he was involved with I presume?

How much did Fingal spend on a 'superdump' under his watch?

What about the waste he has overseen regarding the failed incinerator project?

Fortunately for me I work in the private sector, with my own company so I have a sense of responsibility for the funds in my company account unlike these serial wasters who claim to be civil 'servants'!
I would never, ever become one of these leeches who know that even when they screw up and waste my money there are no sanctions.
It takes a certain mindset and a sense of entitlement to become involved in the civil 'service' in Ireland, thankfully I'm not of that mindset.

micosoft

Phoebas wrote: »

Agree with that. Except that hopefully as people try to conserve water when the bills start hitting doorsteps and as they find and fix leaks (metering is going to greatly help them locate leaks) there may be a real decrease in usage in the short term.

Hopefully, but we are going to be paying more for our water in real terms because we under invested since, well, since the British left. Take one example - there is a massive project to replace the Victorian pipe that supplies nearly 50% of Dublins water. There was a serious risk of it collapsing (you could drive a car though it, it was that big). This risk sat there for decades with rumblings about it every so often - we were incredibly lucky it never gave out (or gratitude to the Victorians for their build quality).

Unfortunately Irish Water will now get blamed for "increasing" charges when in actual fact it is making up for decades of underinvestment which was never tenable. At least the money is now "ring fenced" for water projects.

micosoft

Fr. Ned wrote: »

If this is the case, why are they before the PAC next week?

The story didn't come from the independent, it came from the waster's radio interview.

You have checked his record in the councils he was involved with I presume?

How much did Fingal spend on a 'superdump' under his watch?

What about the waste he has overseen regarding the failed incinerator project?

Fortunately for me I work in the private sector, with my own company so I have a sense of responsibility for the funds in my company account unlike these serial wasters who claim to be civil 'servants'!
I would never, ever become one of these leeches who know that even when they screw up and waste my money there are no sanctions.
It takes a certain mindset and a sense of entitlement to become involved in the civil 'service' in Ireland, thankfully I'm not of that mindset.

They are before the PAC to make certain politicians feel self important perhaps? I don't see a smoking gun here. It's all very reasonably explained. Private sector companies make 50m + investments all the time in IT. The amount being discussed is very reasonable systems fee for a brand new utility - ESB, Eircom, Vodafone, Bord Gais will have all spent this and more albeit spread out over longer time periods as they aren't brand new.

Not sure who you are talking about re waster? Final Superdump and Incinerator really have nothing to do with this topic.

My understanding is Ross got the info from an Irish Indo journo. Either which was it doesn't matter - both as bad as each other. The story reported in the independent was shoddy even by their low standards with not an attempt to ask Irish Water for a breakdown, or wait a day or so, so that they could respond.

I've had the privilege of working in the private sector (including a high potential startup that exited at 100m+), semi state, non-profit and banking/finance sector. And you know what - I've realised that in all of these sectors you have terrible people and fantastic people, and an even bigger proportion of meh people. We have a problem in this country with received wisdom. You are simply parroting the received wisdom - civil servants bad - private sector efficient, when this is patently not always true. I challenge you to explain how you could setup a water system more effectively? Tweak it perhaps. or ignore political reality. TBH it reflects on your lack of experience with sectors/businesses beyond your own (very) narrow world then anything else.

Fr. Ned

micosoft wrote: »

They are before the PAC to make certain politicians feel self important perhaps? I don't see a smoking gun here. It's all very reasonably explained. Private sector companies make 50m + investments all the time in IT. The amount being discussed is very reasonable systems fee for a brand new utility - ESB, Eircom, Vodafone, Bord Gais will have all spent this and more albeit spread out over longer time periods as they aren't brand new.

Not sure who you are talking about re waster? Final Superdump and Incinerator really have nothing to do with this topic.

My understanding is Ross got the info from an Irish Indo journo. Either which was it doesn't matter - both as bad as each other. The story reported in the independent was shoddy even by their low standards with not an attempt to ask Irish Water for a breakdown, or wait a day or so, so that they could respond.

I've had the privilege of working in the private sector (including a high potential startup that exited at 100m+), semi state, non-profit and banking/finance sector. And you know what - I've realised that in all of these sectors you have terrible people and fantastic people, and an even bigger proportion of meh people. We have a problem in this country with received wisdom. You are simply parroting the received wisdom - civil servants bad - private sector efficient, when this is patently not always true. I challenge you to explain how you could setup a water system more effectively? Tweak it perhaps. or ignore political reality. TBH it reflects on your lack of experience with sectors/businesses beyond your own (very) narrow world then anything else.

The fact is that the 'Irish water' quango is being set up at taxpayers expense in order that it'll be eventually privatised.
They want us to conserve water, yet they tell us that charges will increase if this quango isn't profitable enough in order to make it more attractive to any potential buyer.
Maybe friend of FG, 'tax non dom' O'Brien will be the buyer???

You'll have to excuse me for being a tad cynical regarding the motives of this FG government and their mudguard partners.

Phoebas

Fr. Ned wrote: »

The fact is that the 'Irish water' quango is being set up at taxpayers expense in order that it'll be eventually privatised.

That's not a fact - its just your opinion.