Irish Water - Single National Public Water Utility

BrianD3

With all the excitement about Covid I haven't seen any discussion on this which was published yesterday. I only skimmed through it, will ending the Service Level Agreements with the County Councils result in considerable savings due to economies of scale. Will customer service improve, fewer outages and boil notices etc. What happens to Council staff, the policy document seems to suggest that they will be offered positions in the single public utility.

Water Sector Transformation Policy Paper
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/06326-water-sector-transformation-policy-paper/

FAQ
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/baaf7-water-sector-transformation-policy-paper-frequently-raised-topics/

Floppybits

I have no problem with Irish Water being set up to look after the water infrastructure in the country. I think there should be one for each of utilities in the country and they should be enshrined in the constitution so that they cannot be sold off. I think bringing everything under the one roof should hopefully improve the service, removing a layer a of bureaucracy is can be a good thing. The job of work for Irish water to upgrade the system is massive one so I don't we will be seeing improvements for a while yet

James Brown

We had a water department in each council. They would look after any issue pertaining to water needs. They would hire companies as needed to carry out works. They answered to the council and the department of the environment.
They were underfunded for decades but Irish Water will tell you they did great works despite being under funded.
All we needed was more funding. Could have used the money wasted on IW/metering/looking after our own/sweet deal.

Vic_08

In Ireland, every new quango and department just means more bureaucracy, more office staff and of course more senior executive positions, the replaced agencies never manage to lose the same number of staff. The cost of official Ireland before anything actually useful gets done just keeps ballooning.