Water in City Centre off - again! Do we have any infrastructure?!

Skedaddle

This is starting to get ridiculous - the water is off in areas of Dublin City centre again.

I'm really starting to question whether Dublin actually has infrastructure. Two cafes I know are unable to do business this morning because if this.

Ultimately, this is all down to bad planning and failure to build any reservoirs to cope with the demand from new housing built over the last 30+ years.

There's no water shortage. There's an infrastructure shortage.

P_1

Skedaddle wrote: »

This is starting to get ridiculous - the water is off in areas of Dublin City centre again.

I'm really starting to question whether Dublin actually has infrastructure. Two cafes I know are unable to do business this morning because if this.

Ultimately, this is all down to bad planning and failure to build any reservoirs to cope with the demand from new housing built over the last 30+ years.

There's no water shortage. There's an infrastructure shortage.

Tbh I'd say it's more down to not replacing the pipes than anything to do with reservoirs. Between Vartry, Poulaphooca, Bohernabreena and Sandyford there should be more than enough water for the city.

L1011

This is mostly due to burst pipes from the freeze - but pipes are still an infrastructure issue. Some element was people running taps to reduce freeze risk and pipes burst inside houses but its mains and distribution networks leaking more that's the main issue.

Councils spent as little as possible on water for decades and the replacement body has been denied funding by protest.

Skedaddle

The issue, as explained to me, is insufficient water in the reservoirs to deal with an incident like this because the system runs at close to maximum capacity to meet demand all the time without any safety margin. So when you've an issue like this, it can't cope with demand.

Sierra Oscar

Skedaddle wrote: »

The issue, as explained to me, is insufficient water in the reservoirs to deal with an incident like this because the system runs at close to maximum capacity to meet demand all the time without any safety margin. So when you've an issue like this, it can't cope with demand.

Yeah but the reason there is insufficient water in the reservoirs is because we lose close to 50% of all water in the system due to leaks. We run at full capacity due to the huge amount of leaks in the infrastructure.

Fix the leaks and the reservoirs won't be under as much pressure. The recent freeze put additional pressure on the infrastructure due to the occurrence of even more leaks and increased demand through people running their taps to stop internal leaks in homes.

TallGlass

L1011 wrote: »

Councils spent as little as possible on water for decades and the replacement body has been denied funding by protest.

I don't get this logic, because the public disagreed with paying for water. We suddenly stop all investment in the infrastructure around it?

This is clearly a priority, why can't money be divert PSO levies into water and get the infrastructure up to a decent standard for once.

The mentality that because people don't want to pay for something, means the government/councils let it fall to pieces, if they can get money to bail out x/y/z, then they can pony up the cash or manage it better and start to fix the pipes.

And to be honest, if I seen that figure of water loss come down to less than 5% I would happily pay for it, as I know my money is actually going to go into the system.

There are plenty of reason people didn't want to pay for water, infrastructure issues is one and plenty of people didn't and still don't trust Irish Water, or the government to actually put money into the infrastructure rather than Yoga classes for staff.

Begs another question, why is someone not pulling the councils up on this, how was the system allowed to get into such a state where we have massive water loss?

Skedaddle

We haven't stopped all investment in it. The state via local authorities failed to invest in it for decades.

cgcsb

Failure to invest for generations is the norm in Ireland with regard to infrastructure. The busiest railway in the state literally fell into the sea only a few years ago. We spend the money on one of the world's most elaborate welfare systems, then when the prospect of water charging to raise much needed revenue to fix the infrastructure comes about, Natalie and the 10 kids go on a march.

Skedaddle

I agree with some aspects of your point but I’m going to shoot down the continuous statements being made (without fact) that we have very high welfare spending - we don’t. We have fairly mid ranking welfare / social security spend by EU norms.

36.4% of total expenditure. We’re in line with the Netherlands, Belgium and Bulgaria

The UK for example is 38.1% EU average is 41.2% and Eurozone is 42.1%

Figures as % of GDP are utterly meaningless btw. That’s why I’m using as % of total expenditure.

Spend per capita.

IE €5692
UK £ 4798 / €5416
DE €7324
SE 96646 SEK / €9518

I’m picking comparable countries. There’s little point in comparing with countries that have drastically lower costs of living in Eastern Europe.

The Irish system is a tad more expensive than the UK, although sterling has taken a slide and been volatile since the Brexit announcement so, it’s hard to calculate exact comparisons and the Irish unemployment rate is higher (6% - trending downward) than the UK (4.4% trending upward)

We spend a lot on health relative to the UK per capita, yet somehow seem to get poor service from. That’s one wheee we absolutely need to get it right as more money being flung at the HSE seems to just cause it to absorb it without delivering any better results.

TallGlass

Skedaddle wrote: »

We spend a lot on health relative to the UK per capita, yet somehow seem to get poor service from. That’s one wheee we absolutely need to get it right as more money being flung at the HSE seems to just cause it to absorb it without delivering any better results.

Who knows. Regard infrastructure, there are still office support staff in porta cabins in Beaumont hospital. Problem itself isn't the cabins, more so the condition of them. Hospital nearly had to evacuated I think last year cause one of the lights blew due to a leak from the roof getting into the lights circuits.