Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 26 September 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2023: Uisce Éireann
9:30 am
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Apologies have been received from Deputies Cormac Devlin and Imelda Munster. The witnesses are all very welcome. I remind all those in attendance to ensure their mobile phones are switched off or on silent mode. To start, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practices of the Houses as regard references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to both the Constitution and by statute, by absolute privilege. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure that is not abused. Therefore, if statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks and it is imperative they comply with such directions.
Members and witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses of the Oireachtas or an official by name or in such a way as to make her him or her identifiable. Members are also reminded of the provision of Standing Order 218, that the committee shall refrain from inquiring into the merits of a policy or policies of the Government or a Minister of the Government or the merits or the objectives of such policies.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, is a permanent witness to the committee. He is accompanied this morning by Ms Irena Grzebieniak, deputy director at the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, who I welcome back before the committee.
We are engaging with representatives from Uisce Éireann this morning to examine the following matters: financial statements 2023 - Uisce Éireann. The committee has flagged the capital expenditure of the Shannon to Dublin water supply pipeline, including pipe replacement, the transfer for responsibilities from local authorities to Uisce Éireann and accountability to public representatives as areas of interest. We are joined this morning by the following representatives from Uisce Éireann: Mr. Niall Gleeson, chief executive officer; Ms Margaret Attridge, head of water operations; Mr. Chris McCarthy, chief financial officer; Ms Maria O’Dwyer, infrastructure delivery director; and Mr. Sean Laffey, asset management and sustainability director. We are also joined by Mr. Brían Munnelly, principal officer in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. They are all very welcome.
I call on the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, to deliver his opening statement.
Mr. Seamus McCarthy:
As members are aware, Uisce Éireann is the national water utility company and is responsible for providing and developing water and waste water services. Its operations are regulated by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities. The company previously operated under the name "Irish Water", having been established in 2013 as a subsidiary company of the Ervia group. Under the provisions of the Water Services (Amendment) Act 2022, the company separated from Ervia on 1 January 2023 and rebranded as Uisce Éireann. The 2022 Act also brought the company within my remit. Its 2023 financial statements are the first on which I have reported.
The income statement indicates that Uisce Éireann had revenue from its continuing operations totalling €1.56 billion in 2023. Government subvention funding accounted for just under €1.1 billion, representing more than two thirds of the company's operating revenue. The subvention is provided in substitution of the estimated income from domestic water charges. Revenues in 2023 from non-domestic water charges and new connection fees were €245 million and €247 million, respectively.
Uisce Éireann's operating profit for 2023 was €383 million. Unusually for a body on which I report, it incurred tax charges of €49.3 million in 2023. As a result, the profit after tax and net finance costs were €329 million.
Note 3 provides a breakdown of Uisce Éireann's operating costs, which totalled €1 billion in 2023. Within that total, the company incurred expenditure of €115 million in respective employee costs. This included €10.6 million in performance-related awards. An outline of the awards scheme is provided on page 67 of the annual report.
Some €223 million was incurred in relation to local authority agreement costs. These comprised payments in respect of local authorities' staff and other costs associated with the continuing involvement of local authorities in the delivery of water services. Some details of the arrangement with local authorities are included in note 24, related parties. Uisce Éireann also incurred expenditure totalling €287 million in 2023 in relation to hired and contracted-out services.
During 2023, Uisce Éireann invested €1.25 billion in capital projects. At the end of 2023, the company held €6.9 billion in property plant and equipment assets. As outlined in note 17, deferred revenue, €260 million was held at the year end in respect of new connection fees. These fees are received in advance and are recognised as revenue once connections are made.
As set out in note 24, the State funding of Uisce Éireann extends significantly beyond the recurring subvention in substitution of domestic water charges. In 2023, Uisce Éireann received a capital contribution of €580.6 million issued from subhead B5 of the water services programme of Vote 34. This was a 28% increase on the contribution of €454 million in 2022 and brought the aggregate capital contribution to just under €4 billion at year end.
Uisce Éireann also has a €1 billion loan facility, agreed with the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, in 2020, drawing from the central fund of the Exchequer. The facility was put in place to allow Uisce Éireann to repay non-domestic commercial debt it had previously taken on and to fund its future non-domestic water-borrowing requirements. Some €230 million was drawn down during 2023, bringing the total drawdown to year end 2023 to €814.5 million.
I am glad to report that I certified the financial statements on 25 April 2024 and issued a clear audit opinion.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Gleeson, as outlined in the invitation, has five minutes for his opening statement. It is his first time before the Committee of Public Accounts because when Irish Water was first established, it was not under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General, whereas it now is. That is a positive thing.
Some of us on this committee have highlighted this in the past. I think of myself and of Deputy Catherine Murphy, in particular, back when it was being established. Our guests are very welcome and I look forward to our discussion.
I invite Mr. Gleeson to make his opening statement.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
I wish a good morning to all the members of the committee. I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to attend today's meeting. I am Niall Gleeson, CEO, and the Cathaoirleach has already introduced my other colleagues.
We welcome the opportunity to appear here today in what will be our first appearance before the committee as part of the Comptroller and Auditor General process, and to discuss our financial statements for 2023. These statements for 2023, as part of our annual report for last year, were laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas prior to the summer recess by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and were also published on our website. We have also made a submission to the committee summarising the report for members' interest, including Uisce Éireann's role, the governance structure and financial performance highlights from last year. We look forward to discussing this in more detail during this morning's session and we note the special areas of interest highlighted to us by the committee on Tuesday evening.
Uisce Éireann is responsible for the delivery of secure, safe and sustainable public water services enabling the Irish economy to grow and communities across Ireland to thrive. On a daily basis our national team of some 4,000 people are directly involved in delivering essential water services to 80% of Ireland's population, and supporting the drive for connections in order to provide more homes and to enhance Ireland's economy.
We are currently investing €5.26 billion in water service assets across the country, as part of our strategic plans for 2020 to 2024. With this investment we are managing, maintaining, upgrading and building on more than 8,000 water and wastewater treatment plants, pumping stations and water sources. Through our projects, programmes and daily operations, we are upgrading, laying and managing a water and sewer network of 90,000 km. We provide a robust governance and risk management across the organisation with multiple layers of accountability and oversight.
Uisce Éireann was established under the Water Services Act 2013. We are a State-owned entity. As such, we uphold a strong transparent governance framework to ensure accountability, value for money and responsible investment as regards Exchequer funding.
Uisce Éireann complies with the provisions of the code of practice for the governance of State bodies as it applies to a commercial semi-State entity. We align our internal project approvals process with the public spending code and we adhere to the infrastructure guidelines set up in the national development plan.
We are governed by a board that meets monthly and is assisted by four subcommittees covering: audit and risk; investment-infrastructure and sustainability; remuneration; and the Uisce Éireann transformation programme. These committees meet, on average, seven times a year. In addition, we report to our two regulators, namely, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. They review and publish their assessments on a range of economic and environmental performance indicators.
Our funding framework is complex but we are delivering one of the biggest capital investment programmes in the country. The funding and regulatory model for Uisce Éireann is set out in legislation and positioned in the context of the overarching EU water framework directive. As part of this, we are required to submit plans in advance to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities for our proposed operational and investment spending in revenue funding cycles. We are currently in the third of these funding cycles and are preparing our submission to the CRU for the revenue period covering 2025 to 2029. This five-year allowance should enable Uisce Éireann and our supply chain to have the certainty, flexibility and time to be able to plan and deliver high-value, multi-annual projects and operations. However, actual subvention income and equity are currently subject to the Government’s annual budgetary process, which can impact on the long-term certainty around our projects. We have consistently advocated for a move towards multi-annual funding.
Uisce Éireann delivered a strong financial performance during 2023. We delivered the highest level of investment in water and wastewater services in our history, and the history of the State, totalling €1.3 billion in 2023, compared with just over €1 billion in 2020. Key milestones in the year included the construction of 42 new and upgraded wastewater treatment plants, nine water treatment plants, 122 km of sewers and 512 km of water network.
Vital projects were delivered, including under our programme to eliminate raw sewage discharges. Kilmore Quay, County Wexford, Ahascragh, County Galway, and Castletownshend, County Cork, were among a total of ten sites completed in the programme last year.
We also remain committed to playing our part supporting housing delivery and our work under the Government's Housing for All programme continued in 2023. Uisce Éireann completed all five of the key action items assigned to it in the programme. These included the development of an experience-based accreditation scheme, the publication of capacity registers and the implementation of our first mover scheme. We also witnessed continued demand for new connection inquiries and application services. We delivered over 4,500 connection offers associated with almost 43,000 housing units in 2023. The housing units associated with these offers was up over 16% on the previous year. These and other capital investment activities continue to be a significant source of economic stimulus, in addition to our operating and maintenance programmes, which continue to provide both direct and indirect employment and other economic benefits across the Irish economy. We work with over 2,000 Irish and international businesses and suppliers to deliver our work.
Revenue of €1.56 billion for the year to 31 December 2023 was €252 million higher compared with 2022. This was made up of Government subvention income of circa €1.07 billion in respect of domestic water services, as well as non-domestic and new connection revenues of €492 million. Operating costs of €1 billion increased by €115 million when compared with 2022. This is due to a number of factors including: the delivery of significant operational growth and change in 2023 across our direct operations, coupled with the continuing impact of inflation and increased headcount to right-size the organisation for a new operating model, which brings in the responsibility for water and wastewater services for the nation.
We are continuing to make improvements as a maturing semi-State body undergoing significant transformation. In the ten years since our establishment, we have made significant progress, building on the foundations created by local authorities' legacy of vocational delivery of services to customers and communities. We have mobilised a large, strategic workforce and supply chain to support the delivery of plans and programmes and to catch up on decades of underinvestment. The public, businesses and the environment are seeing the benefits of this already. There is still a way to go, however, to ensure capacity is available for continued housing and economic growth and to mitigate against environmental risks. Our water services strategic plan 2050, the national water resources plan and the upcoming capital investment plan for 2025 to 2029 all set out our approach to achieving these improvements.
In the context of ongoing public discussion about long-standing infrastructure challenges, the potential for water and wastewater infrastructure to be prioritised in leveraging strategic national funding sources will be essential. It will provide the basis to accelerate projects that are central to Ireland’s economic and social development. This includes providing the water infrastructure to meet current and future levels of demand for housing provision in parts of the country where the need has been identified, by county development plans, as being the greatest.
Over the next period, Uisce Éireann will continue to navigate the transfer of local authority water services staff, incoming European regulation and increased population and economic demands. We do not underestimate these challenges. While we will see increased pressures on resourcing, timelines and funding in the immediate term, in the long term and through our investment plans we will continue to make up ground, achieve the vision of one national public utility for water and deliver for the people, businesses and communities of Ireland.
To conclude, I thank the committee for the invitation to meet today and we look forward to answering any questions. We will endeavour to provide information on the topic under debate today but commit to following up on any specific queries that we cannot answer or that may fall outside the scope of the session this morning. Go raibh maith agaibh.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Gleeson for that information. The first committee member to ask questions is Deputy Ó Cathasaigh, who has 15 minutes.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Gleeson for his opening statement. He has the dubious pleasure of being audited both publicly and privately - Deloitte and the Comptroller and Auditor General - which I am sure is a real pleasure for the organisation.
We must acknowledge that there have been decades of underinvestment. While a lot of question this morning will be on things that need to be done we must, to be fair, recognise the point from where Uisce Éireann has had to pick up the battle, which is the years of chronic underinvestment.
From our perspective, these are a slightly unusual looking set of accounts because we are more used to auditing Departments, etc. Please help me to understand the structure of the company. The company has 100 shares, 99 of which are vested in the Minister for public expenditure and one in the Minister for housing. Is that correct?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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My next question is on profits. Again, it is unusual for us, as a committee, to see or deal with profits. Uisce Éireann had a €838 million profit in the year that we are speaking about, on which corporate tax must be paid. What happens with a profit? Is it returned to the shareholders?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Will that happen in the next year?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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When I see the capital investment or capital contribution for 2024, will that be included?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Does the capital contribution come from the Department of housing?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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The Department of housing's accounts are going to show the capital contribution less the profit. Am I understanding that correctly?
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
I would like to come in there, if I may. We are a regulated organisation. The regulator decides on our allowed revenue, our allowed operational expenditure, capital expenditure and ultimately, our profit. That profit normally would be used to pay back dividends to the shareholders who are, in this case, the two Departments. However, because of our capital investment need and the need to continue to invest, any profits that we have are reinvested back into the capital network, as Mr. Gleeson said. That is all done within year because we are still working to the zero cash balance at the end of the year, with the exception of deferred revenue, which is the commercial revenue that we have on our balance sheet.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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It is a peculiar structure. The majority of Uisce Éireann's funding comes in Government subvention income, which it does not have to go to market for. That arrives in, year on year. Similarly, capital contributions are paid by the Government. The non-domestic revenue is pretty flat across the years that I have in front of me from 2019 to 2023. Uisce Éireann is the only provider. Is that correct?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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There is no other place that somebody can go-----
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I just want to understand that in the context of bonus payments. The figures are very significant, with nearly 10% of payroll costs accounted for by bonus payments. I am coming from a public sector background. I was a teacher before becoming a Deputy and one's bonus payment consisted of someone putting a packet of biscuits on the table. I would like to know how Uisce Éireann structures bonus payments when it does not have to go out and get the money coming in. I can understand it in the private sector where companies have to go out and get revenue and if they get it, everybody gets a slice of the positivity. There were really substantial bonus payments made, amounting to €10 million, across the board. Can our guests help me to understand what it is an employee does in order to quality for a bonus in Uisce Éireann?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
It is a pay-related award. Across all of the organisation, people are incentivised to deliver in their particular areas. Depending on their level in the organisation, they get a percentage of their salary that is related to performance and that is their pay-related award. We incentivise people to deliver. It is not all about funding. It is about performance, delivery, delivering around-----
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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For the year in question, I have the overall figure which is €10,569,830. The average payout was €6,480, as detailed on page 67 of the accounts. Were there employees who did not receive a bonus of any kind during that year?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
Yes, there were.. The bonus is structured in such a way that a certain amount is against individual performance but there is also an amount against the overall company performance. We have what we call the balance score card which gives targets for leakage rates, Housing for All programmes and so on. That is a composite and people's bonuses are impacted if the company does not deliver on some of those elements. Everybody would take a little bit of a hit every year because we do not achieve all of our targets. On an individual basis, if people do not perform, they might take an individual hit as well.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Can Mr. Gleeson give me a sense of the percentage of employees who did not receive any individualised bonus in 2023?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I am trying to understand this in the context of my primary schoolteacher background, where people turn up and do their work all day long. If the bonus is almost built in, then how do people differentiate it from pay?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
It is built in as part of people's terms and conditions but they do have to perform and deliver against their targets for the year. The vast majority of people do what they are asked to do by their line managers and therefore, they get their bonus. It is 5% up to a maximum of 15%. We are not talking about huge numbers.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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We have data on the average payment but do our guests have information on what the larger bonus payments were?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I understand that but the point is that the company does not need to go to the market for its revenue.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Yes, and I want to get to that as well. I want to dig down into the pay scales. I want our guests to help me to understand the competencies of the staff base that underpin the staffing costs but I would like to get some sense of the larger end of the bonuses paid out.
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
It could be between 15% and 20%. The latter is the absolute cap that anyone can achieve. It is market based and it is also a pay-at-risk system. I do not like to use the word "bonus" because it is pay-at-risk. Staff are not entitled to this payment without reaching certain targets and that is the key point. In terms of actual payments, obviously they are fully taxable but some people could be getting up to €30,000.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Does that cover everything? I know it excludes pension but is there anything within that payment situation that I am missing in terms of perks like company car allowances and so on? I would like a fuller picture of what the pay and conditions look like.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Does Mr. Gleeson have a sense of how many car allowances there are?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Mr. Gleeson said that Uisce Éireann has to go out to the market to source its employees. I did a quick tot of the employees earning between €100,000 and €200,000. There are 328 employees within that bracket, earning six-figure salaries, and there are 16 people in the organisation who earn above that. That is a lot of people. I know Uisce Éireann is a big organisation. It has 833 employees who are earning below that six-figure threshold. I ask our guests to help me to understand the competencies. Again, applying my own frame of reference, I went back and had a look at the primary teacher pay scale, the top of which is €72,950 for 25 years experience and a level 8 or level 9 qualification. Some teachers might have a couple of qualification allowances on top of that but not a great deal. Against that, there are 328 people in Uisce Éireann who are earning substantially greater salaries. What competencies are we buying within the marketplace?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We send about 10,000 people to work everyday, including our own staff and contractors. We are a very large organisation. If one includes the water services staff, there are about 4,500 people directly working for Uisce Éireann every day and the rest are contractors. It is a big organisation and people have big responsibilities. On the question of qualifications, they all have degrees and are well qualified. They are specialists in their particular areas, including planning and construction. We deliver across a huge number of sectors. We would say that we pay within market rates. We are benchmarked and we have lost people. I have lost four senior managers to the private sector in the last couple of years so we are certainly not over-paying. We are paying market rates and the State needs good people to work in the organisation to deliver good services.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I ask Mr. Gleeson to explain how the benchmarking happens because it is obviously very different from public sector benchmarking.
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
There are two elements to it. First, there is the pay and bands and that is benchmarked annually and the second element is the pay movement. Obviously, the pay movement has to be agreed with the group of unions on an annual basis. We use employment surveys from the likes of IBEC, Mercer, and Willis, Towers, Watson, and benchmark against those every year. That would determine what is an acceptable increase or stabilisation.
That then is discussed and negotiated with the group of unions. It goes through full governance within Uisce Éireann itself, through our remuneration committee, which is a subset of the board, and our board.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I have given a good deal of time to that matter. I thank Mr. McCarthy very much for the answers.
I want to get to a bunch of things. I want to ask about liabilities for fines, which we do have. We are liable for fines from Europe, Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI, and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. I had a glance through the synopsis from the audit and risk committee. I am glad to see that it meets given that a recurring theme of this committee is audit and risk committees not meeting. Are we flagging liabilities or potential liabilities for fines from Europe, the IFI or the EPA?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
Fines from Europe are not paid by us directly but by the Department. The fines go to the Department and it manages them. We influence those outcomes. If we are not meeting the regulations on the wastewater directive, we have to do the work, but the fines go directly to the Department not to us. We get fines from the IFI and the EPA.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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The fines go directly to Uisce Éireann as opposed to the Department.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Has there been any kind of foresight work on this? Are we expecting fines to come down the track?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I have a quick question on leakage rates. I want to ask about international comparators. I see that Uisce Éireann went from 46% in 2018 to just under 37% in 2022. I hope that progress has continued into 2024. Will Mr. Gleeson give me an international comparator, such as Denmark or the Netherlands, where I can compare like with like in terms of the leakage rates?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
I might ask Mr. Laffey to come in on this, but I will put some context around it. We have reduced the leakage rate. When we took over, we were at about 48% or 49% leakage nationally. The Deputy referred to 2022. By the end of this year we expect it to be around 33% or 34%, so we are moving downwards, but that is not an acceptable leakage rate. We have a programme to deliver 25% nationally and below 20% in the greater Dublin area by the end of 2030. That is our aim.
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Will Mr. Gleeson give me a monetary figure for that? Will he also put it in terms of the number of litres lost from the system? Each litre comes with a treatment cost and an energy cost. Will he give me a ballpark figure of essentially how much money we are leaking into the ground because of the poor pipe network?
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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Is there not a way to account for the losses? Could Mr. Gleeson not even give me a ballpark figure?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
Not to fustigate, but we cannot give a direct comparison with other countries because our network is quite different. It is very long and flat and it is mainly driven by gravity, whereas if we look at European networks, they are far more compact and they are pressurised. Also, in a lot of other European countries they are not as well equipped with domestic meters as we are, so they estimate an awful lot of the consumption that is used. The way to calculate leakage across European countries is different from country to country, so they are not comparable.
That being said, in the revised drinking water directive, the European Union is going to impose a standardised methodology across the European Union. It will issue targets for every country in 2026, so we will be able to directly compare at that point.
Internationally, it depends on the amount of investment, how old the network is, and the historic investment. On a quantitative and qualitative basis, we would probably be in the lower one third in terms of leakage, but that is mainly down to the fact that we have 65,000 km of network, much of it very old. Some of the materials that were put in during the 1970s and 1980s are not standing up well to time.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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There will be a second round. Will Mr. McCarthy clarify one point the Deputy asked about? He wanted an answer to the question about the highest bonus paid. It was said to be in the region of €30,000. Will Mr. McCarthy say what was the highest bonus paid?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Will Mr. McCarthy get some of the staff to check it while the meeting is proceeding?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. McCarthy. I call Deputy Catherine Murphy.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The witnesses are very welcome. I have been looking for Uisce Éireann to come under the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General for some considerable time. It is very welcome that we have the 2023 audit.
I completely agree with what was said about multi-annual funding. There must be absolute certainty about the future. We have a projected need for housing, for example, and the notion we can have housing without the parallel services with it is nonsense. There must be investment and security in regard to the investment. I also acknowledge there has been significant underinvestment for a long time. We know, for example, that water in the greater Dublin area, GDA, is on a knife edge. Will Mr. Gleeson tell me the leakage rate in that area or is it broken down into smaller areas?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Is that primarily Dublin city, with the old pipes, or does it go beyond that area?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
The greater Dublin area covers parts of Kildare and Meath and the four Dublin local authorities. South Dublin County Council has a relatively good leakage rate, whereas other areas do not. The leakage rate in Dublin city is slightly higher, but that reflects the fact it is quite hard to fix leaks within that area.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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In the absence of a new water supply coming on board, this is an area that has high levels of growth and housing development. There is a reliance on reducing leakage to facilitate future housing development. How has that fallen?
I know quite a lot about Kildare because it is the area I represent. In fact, it had a better than average rate, with a very active leak reduction system before Irish Water came into being. I am surprised that it is below South Dublin's rate because that looks like a backward step.
We can all monitor these things in our own area. I have never come across the number of outages we have encountered in recent years in my area. The statistics that were received under freedom of information bear that out. In 2018, there were nine outages and in 2023 there were 13 outages, so it is not improving under Irish Water. The outages are longer. In the likes of Celbridge town, which has 24,000 inhabitants, in one particular three-week period there was an outage on ten different days. To give an example, Irish Water undertook a big project on the sewerage system, rather than the drainage system, and there was huge disruption during the work, yet there is still a need to put in a water pipe along the same trench and the opportunity was not taken to do it. Why would Irish Water not plan that kind of dual work, given the obvious need in an area, and save money at the same time?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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No. We have been told by Irish Water that it is urgent. I am using it as an example because it is an area I know. I will come back to Irish Water on this, but in fact the project was so chaotic that the county council stopped it. The work was being done by a contractor under the remit of Irish Water.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It was not.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
It was. That was a well-designed project. We used tunnel boring machines under Tolka Park. Normally, you would cut and cover and dig huge trenches which would have destroyed the park. We used tunnel boring machines to minimise the impact in the local area. We dug these massive pits, 40 m wide and 40 m deep. This was all required to attenuate water for the northside of Dublin and to stop overflows and backflows. I would say it was a very well-run project with maybe some interruptions to traffic and construction.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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To be honest, the local authority never stops a project. It was utterly critical of it. I do not want to dwell on an individual project but I do not understand why the two were not done at the same time to achieve value for money, especially where you have to open the road again to install another pipe in the future in what is a very high growth area and there is a demonstrated need.
On staffing, the staff in local authorities have to fully decide by 2026. Are we approaching a critical point for staffing? What is staff retention like?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We have the framework agreement. That was negotiated by ourselves, the local authorities and the unions. It took us two years to get there. That has been agreed and we are following that framework which gives us the deadline of 2026 for everything to be decided.
I agree it is not ideal. We would like people to make their minds up quicker. They have a choice of redeploying within the local authorities, taking the voluntary severance or coming to us. The voluntary severance will close at the end of this month, so we should have a good idea of how many people are leaving the organisation at that point. The local authorities and Uisce Éireann are trying to encourage people to make up their minds about redeploying within the local authorities.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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How does Mr. Gleeson plan for recruitment to the workforce?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We recruit quite heavily. One of the challenges and issues around water services staff is that it is quite an old cohort. They are all near my age and moving towards retirement. Even without this transformation, we would need a massive recruitment programme. We need to bring in young people to learn how these systems work and what the networks are like. We have a big recruitment programme but Ms Attridge might come in a little bit more on exactly what is happening on it.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Will Ms Attridge tell us what Uisce Éireann’s optimum number of staff is and how many staff it loses as well?
Ms Margaret Attridge:
This year, there is a lot of staff movement. Asset operations are the field force and they are the people on the ground who do the work. We had 3,157 staff in March and we have 3,122 now. That is only a difference of 50. We are seeing staff moving from the local authority across into Uisce Éireann or we are recruiting to fill the gaps as they emerge.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is the optimum number? What is the number the organisation needs to have?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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So Uisce Éireann is short, is it? Where is it short?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We are not short. We have some people in the wrong areas and we may have too many people in certain areas. As the recruitment process kicks in and as the transfer process kicks in, we get a four month notice period when the local authorities want to move somebody from existing water services to redeploy within the local authorities. That is not a particularly long period of time so we need to do a little bit of recruitment in advance to be ready for those redeployments.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Will Mr. Gleeson supply to the committee a spreadsheet on workforce planning and where the organisation is losing people?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The organisation has fewer people working now than it had earlier this year. Ms Attridge just told me that.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
Approximately 50 fewer, but it is constantly moving, with people looking to transfer and be deployed back into other local authority departments. The part of the framework that was agreed on the transfer of services to Uisce Éireann said that each individual could make a decision to move back into-----
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Ms Attridge is talking about the cohort again. It would be people within ten years of retirement and that kind of thing within the system because people transferred over. Will there be retirements of the people who transferred to the organisation?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
There will be over time, yes. Obviously, people who transfer over will retire over time and we will be hiring more people to backfill those positions and train those people up. On the front line, we have a small challenge in that people are redeploying quicker than we can hire but we still have a cohort of people who are not front line and are making up their minds. On the east coast, we have a lot more redeployment and movement of people versus the west coast where people have been in water services all their life and they want to stay in water services.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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That is where the organisation is less likely to get transfers across.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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When it is fully transferred across, where will the people who are working within Irish Water be based? Are there physical buildings? Will they be within the local authority? If they are within the local authority, are offices rented from the local authority? What is the plan?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We have a whole programme around the new organisation. In some cases, we will be staying within the local authorities. In Donegal, they want us to stay there, use their offices and we will pay them for that service, so staff will not move. In other areas, the local authorities want to use their office space themselves and they want us to move. In those cases, we are looking for a new office space.
For the vast majority on this programme, most people will not have to-----
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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In terms of the new entity, it was not going to be 31 local authorities all doing their own thing but to centralise things, and I always felt this was mad because the pipes are all over the country and not in one location. It could end up costing additional money to rent offices by virtue of the fact there is a new entity. Is that the case?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
No, not necessarily. If you have ten people sitting in a local authority office now and the local authority wants us to pay for that space, that is fine. It is cost neutral to the State. If we have to find new offices for those people, then we have to find them. The local authority will use that office space itself, so again, I think it is cost neutral to the State.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Gleeson have a projection of the organisation's needs when it comes to space?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I ask that the committee be provided with an outline of that, please.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We will have a second round of questions. What percentage of homes on the mains supply system have modern meters?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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These would have been installed in the past ten years or so.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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None have been installed since then.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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But on existing ones, no?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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What is the cost? How much does it cost to put them in?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. McCarthy might be able to help.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How much did it cost to put in the 980,000 meters?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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No, I just wanted to know the cost. It was more than €300 million.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Okay, thanks for that. On the need for the meters, we talked to Mr. Laffey about that. Irish Water would probably say they are useful. The original intention was to use them for a charging system and we know what happened there. That hit the brick wall at the end of the cul-de-sac and stopped there. In terms of the use of these meters now, if there is a leak in my home, it would show that versus a leak in the mains in that area.
Yes.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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At the time, however, people who worked in water services were clear about this and examples were given of other countries where they do not install a meter in every house or do not have what are called block meters or neighbourhood meters for every 30, 50 or 100 houses. Is that correct?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Irish Water has a gadget with which someone can walk along where the mains are and if there is a leak, it will show. Would that be correct?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I am told it is very high-tech that a leak can be shown by way of a signal from the gadget a person walks with.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The engineer who told me that is wrong. Is that right?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Laffey is an engineer.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How long has he been in water services?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. We will beg to differ on that one.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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They are used in other areas.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The point I am making is that there is no need for an individual meter in every house. It is literally €200 million down the drain. That is the point. It is wasted, gone, on the programme.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Not to mention the bad start it gave Irish Water. How much has Irish Water spent replacing pipes in the main system in each of the last three years?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I suppose I welcome that. Did I hear correctly that 37% is being lost through leaks? Is that correct?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How much was spent on replacing mains in the last three years?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Four years. Okay, that will do.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It was €890 million. Therefore, it was approximately €180 million per year.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Therefore, it was approximately €180 million per year.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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So, it was about €180 million per year.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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On average, we will say, across the five-year period.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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What length of mains is being replaced at any time.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. How many kilometres make up the total network supply?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is 65,000 km. Can Ms O'Dwyer give us the figure again for five years.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It would take approximately 75 to 80 years to replace it at that rate. Would that be correct, Mr. Laffey?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Did I hear correctly that Irish Water has more than 3,100 employees. Is that correct?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Irish Water obviously has to use contractors.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Does it also use call centres?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It has one call centre.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Has it ever had more than one call centre?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How much does that cost per year?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Irish Water has a lot of highly skilled staff. It has been outlined that and why it needs them. For example, there were 67 on more than €150,000 last year. Some are receiving bonuses of in the region of €30,000. There are a significant number of people - 280 last year - on more than €100,000 on top of that. It has a lot of highly qualified people. How much did Irish Water spend last year on consultants?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It spent more than €2 million. Does Irish Water hire PR companies?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is Irish Water staff. I am asking if it hires PR companies.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Would Irish Water get a PR company to write a press release if it was sending something to the newspapers?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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People would be trained by a PR company, however.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How much does Irish Water spend on PR in-house and out-house?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I was struck by the press release in The Irish Times on 7 February. There were a lot of phrases and language in it that to me looked like copy and paste and stuff I see coming from PR companies. There were words and sentences one would see over and over again. Mr. Gleeson might come back to the committee with that figure.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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How many engineers has Irish Water got in-house?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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In the region of-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It would be closer to 1,000. That is a lot of highly skilled people. I will revert to Deputy Murphy.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I will come back to the leakage rate. I will read from an article that states: "The CRU said the figures indicated that Uisce Éireann was no longer on track to achieve its target of reducing public side leakage by 161 million litres per day over a five-year period by the target date of the end of 2024." Is that still the situation?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We believe we have turned that around, but we did have some challenges in 2022 and 2023. There were a number of issues. One of the issues was that when we were doing the negotiation for the framework, there was an embargo on recruitment within local authority water services. In some of the cases, therefore, we had to move network staff into plants to keep them running to keep the water flowing and keep the mains running.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is Irish Water's leakage rate now?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is the target?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is the CRU target?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Does Irish Water have an equivalent with regard to what the leakage rate would be? If the representatives are telling us about leakage rates, they must have an idea what that is. Is it 25% or is it more?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Will Irish Water reach that target?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
Like I said, the challenge for us and what I want to get to is below 20% for 2030. That gives us the next five years to get another 10% to 15% lower in leakage.
We have put the programmes in place. We had a dip in terms of leakage and were not doing well, but we have put a project, called Project Optimum, together to examine many areas of leakage, including private-side leakage and on-the-network leakage. I am confident that we will turn the numbers around and deliver on leakage.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry, Mr. Gleeson, but someone has a device switched on.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Deputy Murphy may continue. I am sorry about that.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Even the best systems in the world see leakages, given how there will always be bursts, and I accept that there is a point below which it is not economical to repair them, for example, if the leaks are very small and a large area has to be dug up to get to them, but despite the growth in the greater Dublin area, there is an absence of a new supply. We are constantly told that we are on a knife’s edge, which I am sure Mr. Gleeson will confirm is the case. In the absence of achieving a reduction in leakage levels, is there a possibility that housing development will be stalled because there is no water supply?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
I would not just put it down to leakage, but the city is going to struggle for supply towards the end of the decade. We will not be turning off supply, but we have a number of mitigation measures in place. Mr. Laffey might explain some of them. Handling leakages is one and we are targeting leakage on the network. We are also targeting leakage in non-domestic properties. For example, where sites are disused and we cannot find their owners, we are going into those sites and fixing leaks. On the private side in domestic dwellings, we will go in and fix people’s leaks for free, but there are people who do not speak to us and ignore us. We are trying to get as much water as we can.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Mr. Gleeson is saying that, unless there is a new supply, we will be at a critical point within six years.
Mr. Sean Laffey:
We are considering doing upgrades to the Leixlip and Ballymore Eustace plants to ensure we have more production capacity.
I will make a comment about leakage. I do not want to complicate matters, as it is a complex area. To put it simply, we look at the water we produce and we know its amount to the litre. Via metering, we look at the water we believe is being consumed. Where there are no meters in place, we make estimations. We call the gap between production and consumption “leakage”, but it is called “unaccounted for water” on the water balance. While leakage forms part of that figure, another part is actually water that is consumed and used by domestic and non-domestic customers but that we cannot track. I will provide an example. We had many problems in Athlone. There was a particular non-domestic property that had a second connection, essentially through the back door, where a megalitre of water was going per day. It was not leakage, but it changed the complexion of the leakage calculations in Athlone. We found the water and it was doing good work. Our leakage figures do not necessarily reflect the leakage rates. It is unaccounted for water.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I presume Uisce Éireann advises the Department on an ongoing basis of the critical situation that the greater Dublin area is in.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Has Uisce Éireann received an assurance about investment? Six years is no time when planning a big project to bring water on board. It is a tiny amount of time. What are the assurances?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
The interim projects we are considering, for example, putting additional storage into the network as well as additional large trunk mains to ensure that we can transfer water effectively around the greater Dublin area, are funded. We have no difficulty in that regard. It is just a question of us getting through the statutory consent process to deliver them. We recently got approval gate 1, AG 1, approval for the water supply project to move up to and through planning.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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May I contribute again later?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Yes. I will call Deputy O’Connor now, as I know he has another engagement.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to raise the issue of Uisce Éireann’s profitability. I read from the 2023 financial statements that it had reported a profit of €329 million compared to €221 million in 2022. Is that correct?
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Being a rural TD is often an interesting task. We represent many small villages and towns that are a long way away from Uisce Éireann’s headquarters and where there have been persistent issues with the role that Uisce Éireann was supposed to play in providing people with a quality water supply, including safe drinking water and proper wastewater treatment. One of those issues can be seen at a village called Ballyhooly, which is near Fermoy in north County Cork. I have been inundated with people from its community telling me about how there is not even a plan to meet the ongoing water supply problems in their village. Think of how that impacts a household. I spoke to a pensioner and was told that the electric showers no longer functioned due to the lack of pressure and the toilets in the home could not fill properly, making them impossible to flush consistently. The person has an autoimmune disease. In terms of gas heating in homes in Ballyhooly, low water pressure prevents gas boilers from functioning, leaving those homes without hot water and heating as we approach the winter. The water issues also impact on the pensioner’s cooking, laundry and dishwashing, as the utilities in the house are not able to work. The pensioner’s wife is also a pensioner and they are retired in the village. The pensioner told me that the pressure was so bad in the morning and evening that they were literally down to a drip or, sometimes, nothing at all. Planning was granted for another 40 houses over the wall from their home with no conditions applied regarding water quality. The pensioner asked me to ask Mr. Gleeson whether his shower works every morning. As an Oireachtas Member, I look at how Mr. Gleeson’s organisation has no plan to fix the village’s issues, yet Uisce Éireann recorded a profit of €329 million in the last calendar year. Uisce Éireann was created to streamline and improve the State’s capacity to fix water quality problems, so how is it running a profit of that much when Ballyhooly and dozens, if not hundreds, of other locations in the country do not even have a functioning water supply?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
The profit we generate every year is invested directly back into capital. We have projects all over the country. We are improving networks in some small towns and working on large projects. That €320 million plus is reinvested in capital programmes. It is not returned to the Government or just sitting on our balance sheet.
Ms Attridge might discuss Ballyhooly specifically and the operational challenges we have experienced there.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
There have been supply issues in Ballyhooly. We acknowledge that. The local crews have been trying to sustain the supply by constantly fixing leaks and trying to optimise a booster pump that pumps water from the reservoir, but if we boost too much, there is a risk of pipes bursting and leaks increasing. The margin is very tight, but the crews are working on it constantly.
We are considering possible solutions. Improving water pressure to houses in Ballyhooly will involve replacing approximately 6 km of pipeline with pipes of an upgraded size. It will be a costly project, but it will be going into our portfolio for consideration for investment.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Is there an estimated timeline? We are definitely talking years, but will it take two, three, four or five years? In Whitegate, which I am sure Ms Attridge is well aware of, persistent issues lasted for more than a decade before Uisce Éireann got its backside into gear.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
As the Deputy probably knows, the good news on Whitegate is that construction has commenced on site. I acknowledge that there has been a boil water notice on Whitegate for some time, but that will be lifted by the end of 2026. I hope the people of Whitegate will no longer have to boil their water at that stage.
Regarding the timeline for Ballyhooly, we are considering the feasibility of options for laying pipes.
We are looking at the no-dig options, which would involve tunnelling and would be cheaper. We will have to look at the feasibility of the options for laying the pipe and then look at how we will fund it between 2025 and 2029.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I cannot stress enough the importance of this. People in locations that have been referenced often feel they are ignored and forgotten. I thank Ms Attridge for taking the opportunity to listen but I need to see concrete progress being made.
There are situations where there are long-term water outages. Whitegate is a good example, although the C and AG and the Chairman are probably asking why I am raising these domestic issues in my own constituency. Some 9,000 people have been almost a decade without a quality water supply. I have a big issue with the policy of Uisce Éireann around providing those homes with remediation or some form of compensation. They want to be able to access quality water and an emergency water supply in their own areas, whether that is bottled water or otherwise. There is a cost to having to go in and out for water, particularly for OAPs, vulnerable people and those in households where there is somebody with a disability or being cared for. Midleton is the nearest town in that area and it has had its own challenges in recent times. It is not fair. I believe they should be given some form of compensation for the provision of bottled water. It adds a huge cost to those individual homes. To my knowledge, under the current policy, there is no plan in place whereby Uisce Éireann would step in, do what is morally right and provide those homes with a supply of bottled water in their own communities, rather than getting them all to travel in and out to their nearest urban centre, which is grossly unfair. The same could be said for Ballyhooly.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
Under our regulatory framework, when a “do not consume” notice is issued for a particular water supply, we are obliged to provide bottled water, although there are very few of those at the moment. For boil water notices, it is not within our regulatory model or framework to provide bottled water. We reach out and notify vulnerable customers to allow them to make alternative arrangements, but we are not funded to provide bottled water in the case of a boil water notice. We have seen a huge improvement-----
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I must tackle Ms Attridge on that. Uisce Éireann is not funded to provide water.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I go back to my first point. How much profit did Uisce Éireann make last year?
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Answer the question. How much profit did it make last year?
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I would say that to do what I am asking here would cost less than 10% of that profit.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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Nine years of boiling water is a long time.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
Whitegate is a big frustration for us. We spent a considerable amount of money in recent years trying to improve the existing source, which was a big challenge for us. That did not work, unfortunately, although we spent time there. When we went for planning, we got objections in the local area. How can people object to improvements in their own area? It is a big frustration for us when we go around the country trying to improve things and people object. Nonetheless, we are now building in that place.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I hate to reference it because there are many officials across the State and in the Civil Service who work hard to try to do their job. However, this is the type of thing that feeds into the narrative of people living in a state that is not dealing with the needs of the public despite the fact the Exchequer receipts are coming in so high. Given how profitable Irish Water is, it is in a position to deal with this. It should take this issue aside for three or four months and set up a task force or a working group with the Department of local government and the local authorities. Why can Uisce Éireann not come up with a comprehensive plan to go into these communities where there are boil water notices and provide them with what they want? If it does it at scale, it will be an awful lot cheaper than what it is costing those individual households to go into supermarkets to buy water. It is worth referencing that the deposit return scheme has increased costs for such people. It has been going on for nine years and we can see how it adds thousands of euro of additional cost to some households in that area. It is unfair and unacceptable.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
With regard to boil water notices, there was considerable underinvestment in our treatment plants for a number of years, but we are catching up and prioritising the areas that are most at risk of boil water notices. The EPA report at the end of 2023 referred to approximately 90 boil water notices across the country, impacting 230,000 people. This year, to date, we are down to approximately 23 boil water notices, impacting 70,000 people, so by the end of the year, we will have less than 50% of the boil water notices that we had last year.
James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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That is all the more reason to do what I am asking.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
What we are trying to do is focus our efforts on delivering solutions for the people of Ireland. We have a target within our balanced scorecard targets, and it is that everybody in the company has to work to close a boil water notice within 30 days. This is measured by the CRU and the EPA. We are focusing on closing down these boil water notices and fixing them quickly to minimise the impact on people. We are very conscious of the impact on people right across the country when these things happen.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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There was a legal dispute between Abtran and Irish Water. The contract was concluded and a new entity won the tendering process. Can Mr. Gleeson remember what the cost of that legal dispute was and how it concluded?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I ask Mr. Gleeson to come back to me on that. Uisce Éireann uses one consultancy firm, Capita Customer Solutions. What does it do for Uisce Éireann?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I presume that includes outages. What else does it do?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What if somebody was looking for a connection?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We hear from the construction sector all of the time that it has difficulty dealing with Uisce Éireann.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is the cost of that annual contract and over what period of time is it?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Over what period of time?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It will then go back out to tender.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Has Uisce Éireann had reason to go to the State Claims Agency for any issue in the last couple of years?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I will move back to the issue of leak reduction in the greater Dublin area. The year 2030 is a critical point. Will the leak reduction and modifications in, for example, storage facilities be sufficient on their own to meet the projected growth and the current need? Is a new supply essential?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
New supply is essential. We are going for planning next year and if things go well, we would hope to have that new supply delivering by 2032. The interim projects will bring us through to 2030 or 2031. What I am saying is that it will be tight, but that view of delivering the water from the water supply project is probably optimistic, given our planning and consenting processes.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We have had a pretty awful year weather-wise. It strikes me that if we get a summer where there is more than a week of nice weather, there is a hosepipe ban. Some of this relies very heavily on the weather. In critical periods, for example, in 2030, if we had a nice dry summer, we could end up on that trajectory.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What kind of income did Uisce Éireann have in the last year from development contributions?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The representatives spoke about how they prioritise issues. A colleague of ours and a former member of the Committee of Public Accounts, Deputy Catherine Connolly, yesterday raised the issue of a potentially serious problem with the pipes carrying wastewater from east Galway to the estuary of the River Corrib. Is there a planned project there? She has drawn attention to something that could potentially happen. We should not wait until it fails - I presume Uisce Éireann does not do so - but, rather, project where spending needs to happen. Is that the kind of thing-----
Mr. Sean Laffey:
I was at a meeting today about a consultation on a drainage plan for the whole Galway city area. We are aware of that. That should be completed next year and it will give us options to examine, including additional wastewater treatment capacity to the east of the city and a reorientation of the networks in the area. A number of issues were raised yesterday by Deputy Connolly. The siphons under the River Corrib are not at risk of collapse. We have had them surveyed. There is a local issue which will be fixed through capital maintenance early next year. There is no issue there. On the issue of bringing tankard-loads of waste from the Barna and Oughterard area, they were associated with us taking a pumping station out of service so that we could upgrade it. Since that upgrade has been put into place, we have not been tankering. We are very acutely aware of Galway and there will be proper strategic and structural plans in place to ensure there is a strategic drainage network for the Galway city area into the future.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Laffey for that clarification because it was raised yesterday in the Dáil.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I want to revert to some questions I have. We know that data centres are using a lot of electricity. How much water do they need? What percentage of your water is it?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Okay, so it is not huge.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I will move on to the issue of local representation. I served on a county council, as have some of the members who are present. I think Deputy Murphy and I served on county councils when water services were under the remit of local authorities. It was fairly satisfactory because if there was a local problem, it would go to a local engineer and the problem would be identified and resolved very quickly. I have to tell you that this has been enormously frustrating for local councillors and TDs. I will outline two experiences for the representatives. Four Christmases ago, sewerage wastewater backed up in the system on the Mountmellick road in Portlaoise. It was actually coming from the bathroom in a person's house. This was directly after Christmas. A local councillor contacted Irish Water and made a number of attempts to get somebody. A truck arrived after a period. It was one of those trucks that clears out the line. It spent two days working on it but was not able to fix it. The local councillor spoke to a member of staff of Laois County Council who had been a general operative in water services for years. He said he knew what the problem was,but the council could not go near it because it did not have a job order from Irish Water. That contractor failed anyway, but at that stage three days had gone by. A second contractor arrived on the fourth day and the same thing happened. It spent the day at it but was not able to identify or clear the problem. That was day four. It was then five days into the problem and a local contractor who had bid for work with Irish Water, with Laois County Council, arrived with one member of staff who was probably still under the remit of Laois County Council at the time and, within one hour, the problem was identified and solved. In the meantime, that councillor had spent a lot of time and experienced a lot of frustration trying to sort this out. The householders had to endure sewage from other houses in their houses. That was not too nice, I can tell you. The management of Laois County Council had to get involved in it, and it was able to resolve it. The point I am making and the reason I am telling this story is that a local engineer or general operative - the man with the truck who bid for work with Irish Water - arrived on day three. It is my understanding that Irish Water worked down through a pecking order. That is what we discovered at this point because I had some involvement in this as well. He identified it within a matter of minutes and within an hour or so the problem was solved and the system was flowing again.
I can give another example. On Church Street in Portlaoise, there are two buildings standing side by side. There is a meter on one building that works and there is a meter sitting outside the other. We will call these buildings “A” and “B”. There is a meter outside building A that does turn. There is a meter outside building B that does not turn. Building A, despite only one member of staff being in it, appeared to have very high water usage. The suspicion was that building A might have been supplying more than just itself. The bills started arriving from Irish Water, and they were very substantial. Eventually, it was arranged for the local water keeper - the man in the van - to arrive to check it. The suggestion was to get the people in buildings A and B to turn off all the taps and not to flush toilets or do anything else, and then get the people in building B to turn on a few taps. That is a substantial building, with more people working in it. Then, presto, the meter at building A started turning at a rate of knots. They turned it off, and it showed that building A was supplying building B. That is okay. It is an inherited problem and I understand that. It came from the old system and I understand that Uisce Éireann is trying to sort out meters in every building, but there is a large number of these. Bills are still arriving, however. In fact, there was contact from the lead of the Uisce Éireann billing team. I think that was on Tuesday but I have not had time to talk to them about it. The point is that a year has gone by and there is a high stack of paperwork because we are keeping records of everything that has gone on and it still has not been resolved. It is now clear and has at last been accepted that building A is supplying building B. This is down to the lack of connection at local level with human beings. It is as simple of that. There should be somebody in each county, such as an engineer, who can examine these things and sort them out. There should be one administrator, one engineer with a secretary. I think the public representatives who are present may have a different take on this or they may be on the same page as me on this. This would identify these problems quickly and get them sorted.
This is enormously frustrating. The amount of time my office has spent on this is enormous, as is the amount of time that has been spent on this by local authority staff and the number of people in call centres to whom we have spoken. We have spoken to reams of staff at this stage. We are exhausted by it. The point is that this is a simple problem that was very easily identified. The local water keeper, the people next door and I identified it within ten minutes. Does Mr. Gleeson understand my frustration at that?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We were running around in rings for a year, as were dozens of other people, including those in the call centre for which Uisce Éireann is paying €15 million per year, and the billing department.
There are layers of people involved in this stage, but this has to be simpler. There has to be a straight line of communication and it has to be short. The longer you make the line of communication, the more diversionary routes there will be on it. It is not working, and I know I will be told there is a liaison person in every area and region. As I understand it, there could be one for water in and water out. None of that matters. That is a load of rubbish. What is needed is one engineer and one administrator in each county to sort out these problems.
When it happens out of hours, it is a nightmare to try to sort out these problems. I can tell Mr. Gleeson about dozens of others but those are just two I am very familiar with. What are Uisce Éireann going to do to sort out this enormous waste of money and people’s time that is causing so much frustration?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Fifteen years ago, I would have had that sorted in two days by Laois County Council.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I accept that Uisce Éireann inherited this problem and I also give credit for the general improvement of water quality in the Laois area. Somebody will hear me saying this and they will contact me tomorrow and say you are wrong about their area, but that is my experience from talking to residents in different part of the county. I want to acknowledge that. This particular problem I am raising in relation to local representatives and the sorting out of problems-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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What I have just outlined is an appalling waste of money and time.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We are complaining about this for ten years. Councillors have complained about it for ten years.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Not these two scenarios, but scenarios like them because it is clearly identified. In fact, I told Phil Hogan, before it was ever set up, that this was going to happen.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We recognise there is a gap as we move to a national utility from the old connection between local councillors and the local authorities. I have set up a team that reports to directly to me, and the Cathaoirleach has met John Dempsey who is trying to plug that gap. We know there are situations where things are not getting resolved.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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But to get to that point, Mr. Gleeson-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We have covered all of that.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We have responded to 100,000 queries in the past ten years through that dedicated line for representatives. There are areas where our system is working but I will take your idea on board. We need some way of clearing out these troublesome issues that do not get resolved. Let me take that idea on board and consider it.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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You need to be able to identify the problems quickly. In a lot of cases, water is wasted and everyone agrees and is with you on the need to conserve water and improve water quality. We need to be able to identify the problem quickly and sort it quickly without having to go around the world to do it. That is the problem.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Do not escalate it; sort it.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
The Cathaoirleach is right. At the moment, there are 31 different ways of working in the 31 different local authorities around the country. As we now move into our new structure, we are looking to stream the teams into different specialties so that when people go out to sort a problem, we have the right people there and it can be fixed first time. We are also looking to systemise all the work so that we will capture all the work and the information will come back live from the field into the call centre to allow either call centre operatives or the technical teams to get the information back from the field really quickly to enable communication with the likes of yourselves-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The call centre operative is somebody on contract to you who does not have great English. I do not mean this in any negative way towards the people who come here, but I have spoken to people with very poor English about trying to identify a problem. It can be difficult to tell them about some townland such as Derreen in Durrow and trying to explain to them where that is. There are huge problems, regardless of who they are. It does not matter where they are from or whether they were born and raised here and here for ten generations. That still does not matter. The problem is, when you talk to a call centre, they are only on contract to you. You need an engineer and one administrator in each county.
Ms Margaret Attridge:
You are right. If the information is received quickly from the field, it can be used not only by the call centre but also by the engineers. To give an example, we systemised the information coming back from the field on blockages in Tralee and it helped us identify where those blockages were occurring. That enabled us to carry out some remedial works. We reduced the calls about blockages coming from Tralee by 80% in that period of time. Our engineers use the information that comes from the field. When we move into our new structure, systemising work will give us that information which will allow us to provide a better service.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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When a problem arises, when a water outage arises or where sewage is coming up in houses where the wastewater system has failed, there needs to be a quicker way of fixing it. I have given you two examples. I am painfully aware of the route you travel because I have been around and around it. I am saying that system is not efficient. It is a waste of money and you are throwing good money after bad. It is frustrating for local councillors who all have a mandate from their local communities to represent them. They need to be taken into account. I ask the witnesses to go back and change that and give consideration to what I have said here today. We will break for ten minutes.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I welcome the witnesses. They have been here previously but not regarding the C and AG's report. I have been listening in on the meeting and have one question. It is not often we ridicule people on the basis of their profitability, particularly as a utility of the State. I assume the setting up of Irish Water is essentially equivalent to that of the ESB.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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So it is in quite early stages.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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With regard to that profitability, I am concerned about one thing. It is not the same thing Deputy O'Connor referred to. With regard to the housing crisis we face, who determines the price of connections on a commercial basis or the level of the fee? We have huge issues with determining affordable housing. By no means are Irish Water's profits of such gigantic proportions as to solve the housing crisis or the affordability issue, but how does Irish Water interlink with that requirement?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
There is no question of them sitting there doing nothing. We are dedicated to the Housing for All programme but we are a regulated entity. We engage with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. It sets our billing costs with non-domestic, but also the connection prices. Mr. McDonagh might want to come in and explain how that-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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If it is the regulator, I believe at some point we could bring the regulator in and have that discussion. It is significant. Given the realm we are in today, I think we should add the regulator to the work programme.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We will be discussing the work programme in the afternoon, as normal. The Deputy may want to put it as an item on the agenda.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Yes. We have to join the dots. If Irish Water is under the remit of a regulator, we need to understand who does what. I thank Mr. Gleeson.
With no disrespect to the Chair, I have had a very different experience in Wexford as to how leaks are dealt with. There are problems - do not get me wrong. Huge problems with outages were experienced in early 2023. I am sure everyone will remember the Creagh debacle, which I know is fully sorted. We had issues in Enniscorthy in August for a week. The answer comes back that it is increased usage without being able to build up a reserve. I do not have the same issue on a day-to-day basis. Where I make a complaint, it gets dealt with very promptly. Credit where credit is due.
I do not know if it is the ground staff in different counties, or how it is dealt with, but I do not have that same experience.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is good. I will talk to you later.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Absolutely. Maybe some lessons should be taken from down in Wexford. I do not know. The other thing is that we do have an issue when it comes to the farming sector with regard to who is responsible for reading these meters. One significant issue, I have raised this before, is that farmers themselves are not able to read the meters because they are at a significant depth, they cannot see them, it is raining, there is water on top of them, etc. There are issues like these. I would like to know how this would be dealt with plus the frequency of readings.
Big bills tend to accumulate that are not expected. We must find a way around this issue. I am not saying people do not owe the money but a massive bill can come in that people were not expecting. We must find a way to deal with this problem. This is in the light of a situation where we are seeing farm incomes drop significantly. In the case of dairy farming, it is 67%, and also the case in tillage farming. We do need, therefore, to look at how we deal with this issue to prevent bills or bad debts from occurring. We might just be given a note on how this matter is dealt with rather than going through the whole process. I can liaise with my constituents on the matter.
I am interested in how we determine what goes ahead in regard to certain projects. I will just get the name right now but I am aware of the rural water programme. I will declare my interest. I am from Ramsgrange. It has a secondary community school with a capacity for 500 pupils but it currently has 770 pupils. A planning application has been lodged and the belief is that planning application is going to be turned down based on wastewater capacity. The real problem is that we are only one and a half miles away from where the latest sewage treatment plant was installed in Arthurstown. There is an outlet for Ramsgrange to access that facility, but that has not happened. I have been told - and it was announced all right by Government councillors - that the funding was there and it was all hunky-dory. It is not, and from what I am reading, it will take perhaps two to three years for that to happen, which is a significant stalling point for the planning. This is the case not just for the community school. It is a parish that has a community school, a national school, a pub, a church and a supermarket. It is a parish ripe for planning and where we need to build houses but we cannot because of our wastewater issue. I believe there are seven or eight other projects in this rural programme. How does Uisce Éireann ascertain which ones go ahead, because as far as I am aware, it is only going to be one or two from a funding perspective?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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It is not matched funding. It is 15% from the local authority.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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My apologies. It has nothing to do with Uisce Éireann so. That is absolutely fine.
Mr. Sean Laffey:
The only thing we say is we would generally agree that when these types of projects are going ahead, and they are few and far between on the wastewater side, we would like them built to our standards and specifications so we can take them into public ownership straight away as soon as they are built to ensure they are not a burden on the local community.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Clearly, then, Uisce Éireann does liaise. It gives the specification, I assume.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Okay. The contractor, though, would be working to the specification under the directive or to Uisce Éireann's specification.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The funding then comes from the Department directly.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I am sorry, Deputy, but regarding that programme, we do have a representative here from the Department, Mr. Munnelly.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Mr. Munnelly might inform me then that this funding is sanctioned.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I am told now it has been whittled down to seven or eight in seven counties.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I will not take up Mr. Munnelly's time. I ask if he can get me the information, because it is extremely important.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Clearly, this has nothing to do with Uisce Éireann and that is perfect. I say this because the contention is that people believe Irish Water is holding up planning but clearly it is not. It is important that this point is clarified. It happens that it is then the Department or the councils themselves involved in this issue. It is important we join the dots in this regard. The reasoning is that the school could go ahead with its planning and put in its own wastewater treatment plant, but when we join the dots, why would that school spend in excess of €150,000 when that could go in and be contributed to in the context of the workings of the actual wastewater scheme for the parish or the surrounding area? My question is how this is determined. I think this is a very important factor because it is about value for money. We should not have a school having to spend this money when there is going to be an imminent connection. It would perhaps take the school a year and a half to two years to build the project, in which case we might be ready for the connection anyway. We are, though, not getting any clarity. This is the real issue. I would appreciate if Mr. Munnelly could come back to me with that information.
Mr. Brian Munnelly:
I am sorry, it is actually a different scheme. It is the unsewered villages scheme. Seven projects have been approved under it. The Minister approved €45 million for those projects. The work is ongoing with the local authorities and Uisce Éireann, I think, around the specifications and delivery of those seven projects.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Are we now back to Mr. Laffey?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Uisce Éireann, though, is not holding it up.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Not to Mr. Laffey's knowledge anyway. I need the information in this regard then from Mr. Munnelly.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I refer to where to go in regard to this project. The school needs its extension.
The other thing I wish to talk about is that it was mentioned that the redundancy comes to an end. What do we call it?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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It comes to an end at the end of this month. In effect, if there is no further uptake of the voluntary redundancy, where will this leave Uisce Éireann from a recruitment deficit perspective?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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No, my question was where would it leave Uisce Éireann. How many staff does Mr. Gleeson expect to come over from the county council?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Is it known how many employees are in the sector over there, as we will call it?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Okay. If Uisce Éireann got them all, then, it would have a problem. Is that correct?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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In effect, then, does that mean the other employees in the councils will be left without a job or will they be redeployed?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Only 200 or 300 of 2,300 can do so, however. Is that what was said?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Yes, I appreciate that point and I think it has been well threshed out. Obviously, it is a work placement issue from that perspective. I assume that Uisce Éireann is undertaking that the workers will be no worse off if they do go over to Uisce Éireann and all that.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Well, I can too, but my sympathies lie with ensuring that Irish Water or Uisce Éireann keeps up-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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-----and that we do not go backwards. The real question that I was coming to was does Uisce Éireann have a critical skills need and has the organisation been placed on the critical skills list for recruitment?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Does Mr. Gleeson have an issue with it from that perspective? Should Uisce Éireann be making that application in advance?
Ms Margaret Attridge:
On the east coast we are struggling to compete across the market. We are focusing on it in our advertisements. Where we might have advertised on a more regional level previously, we are now advertising very locally to try to attract people. They will have certainty that they are staying within their own locality should they accept a post rather than responding to a regional advertisement and having a fear of having to travel from Wicklow to Louth or something like that. We are trying to take the fear out of it.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Is Irish Water getting a response?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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This is Uisce Éireann's first year here. It is my fourth or fifth and, in general, what we hear about is recruitment and retention. Uisce Éireann does not want to move into that. It took certain sectors years to even get accepted onto the critical skills list. That is the issue that must be addressed now so that we do not have a situation whereby there are resources but not staff. That is what is happening across the board. Do you agree, Chair?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, absolutely.
To clarify, the Deputy mentioned the group scheme in Ramsgrange, but there are other schemes like that. They provided a great service. Many of them came into being in the 1950s and 1960s when local committees were formed.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Ramsgrange is not a group scheme.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Did it come from a group scheme? That is what I am trying to understand.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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No. It was just that we did not have one before.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Was it a local authority scheme?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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There is no sewer in the village at the moment but what about the water supply? Is that a group scheme?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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If it is not under Uisce Éireann now, that would tell me that it was not taken in charge by the local authority, Wexford County Council.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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They are all private sewerage systems.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The water comes from Uisce Éireann.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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There are two things. There is confusion here. We must separate out the two things. There is a water supply, either from the county council, a group scheme or a private well. When Irish Water entered the scene, the systems that were in the charge of the county councils were then taken on board automatically by Irish Water. They transferred over.
To be helpful, I followed the exchange with Deputy Verona Murphy very carefully, and in the case of Ramsgrange, it does not appears to have been taken in charge by Irish Water or Wexford County Council.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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We are talking about waste.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We will come to that in a second.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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But that is what we are talking about. It is not the water supply.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Is it correct that there is no wastewater system?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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That is correct. There is no waste management system.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The issue here is the creation of the wastewater system.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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We have access to one down the road. Funding has been granted but we have not started the process.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Because the funding is coming from Mr. Munnelly's Department, that tells me that the water supply was a group scheme.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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When that is completed, Irish Water will come back in.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That needs to be clarified.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Absolutely. The piped water supply in the area-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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That is a public scheme. It is not a group scheme.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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If it is a public scheme, it would be completed by Offaly County Council.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I am on automatic pilot.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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That is correct. It is there now.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is. That clarifies the matter.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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But that is the water coming out of the tap.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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What I am speaking about is the creation of a scheme for waste management.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I hope it can be resolved and that Deputy Murphy will see some progress now that she has a straight line of communication with the Department.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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It is a case of moving it, and making sure that they move in tandem with the planning applications.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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They can work together on it. That is good.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Deputy Catherine Murphy wants to come back in again. She has ten minutes.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Gleeson know the percentage of staff who transferred across from the water services section of the local authorities to Uisce Éireann?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Does Mr. Gleeson have the overall percentage?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Overall, does Ms Attridge have any idea? I presume it was different at the beginning. Uisce Éireann is coming into a different relationship with staff now.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Institutional memory in this case is incredibly important because the pipes are underground and people have knowledge of where the problems are located.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Are some of the 2,300 going to exit? It may be a small number. Does Uisce Éireann know what the number will be?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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But Mr. Gleeson is quite hopeful that he will get a few hundred. There will still be a residual of people who stay within the local authority, whose expertise is in water services. What relationship will Uisce Éireann have afterwards to at least avail of their institutional memory or will there be a complete severance?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We have up to the end of 2026 to sort this, so what we will be trying to do is to get as many to come across to us as possible. If the ones who prefer to redeploy to the local authority are critical, we will ask them to delay their transfer and do a skills transfer to new recruits. We have a programme in place to try to cope with all that. If people want to go to the local authority, we are not going to be able to stop them.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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They have rights and entitlements. We understand that. The local authorities will end up with perhaps 1,500 staff from water services who will be deployed into something else because they will not have a function any longer.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I want to come back to the situation in Kildare. I have a useful document that was compiled by a very good citizen journalist, Treasa Keegan. She made a freedom of information application and put together a document that gives us a profile of Kildare. Some 250,000 people live there. There was a good leak detection system before the water services ever transferred. It seems to have deteriorated, but there has been a lot of housing development, which would cause disruption. I understand that puts pressure on pipes and the like. The document looks at the profile of water services over the county, which has a big cohort of people. Some 46% of customer service tickets were for water outages. There are 120,000 customers with individual water service connections. What Uisce Éireann said in the response is that there were less than 13%, or 15,578, service requests in the last six and a half years. I would not have said it was less than 13%. I would have thought it was very high. There was a very stable water situation previously. It is very obvious that there are higher levels of disruption. Some businesses that are very water dependent, such as barbers and hairdressers, just have to close the door. If it is repeated, then it is very problematic.
The other point is that there seems to be an inconsistency in the deployment of water tankers. We made a request for water tankers when there were repeated outages. Over 20 days there might have been ten outages. It was astronomical. We were told that water tankers would not be deployed because the area was too large. I know that the shops ran out of bottled water. There is an inconsistency here. I ask Mr. Gleeson to go back and look at where there are problems.
The other thing is that we get complaints from people. This is similar to what the Chair has talked about. We hear from people who experience difficulty when they contact the call centre. Weekends, in particular, are a problem. Will the witnesses have a look at that? I can only go on what people are complaining to me about. Very often, we get an overview of things.
The majority of the outages were unplanned, which means bursts of water, and that is how we lose a lot of water. When a pipe bursts, a lot of water is lost before we can get to it. People are discommoded. The information I have is broken down to individual towns. The two towns that went backwards were Leixlip and Celbridge. There were slight improvements in Newbridge and Naas. Those are all big towns. This information is quite useful. A citizen journalist can do that work. I am sure that Irish Water maps things out but this information tells a story about a difficulty here. I said earlier that I was told categorically that an upgrade in the water has been prioritised but that was after a job was done in the same location. I have been told that categorically and I do not understand why those things do not align.
I will return to one other thing in respect of new connections and work orders. There were difficulties that were not properly captured at one point. That information is on page 75 of the Uisce Éireann statement on internal controls. There was an impact on reported revenue for 2023, which increased by just €10 million as a result. Was there a loss of income or was it an under-reporting? Is there an amendment to the accounts as a consequence? Does that mean that previous years' reports of revenue were incorrect? There was a difficulty with work orders and a number of connections.
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
I will answer that question and Mr. McCarthy will answer in more detail. The issue in question arose where developers were making their own connections. They had already paid their connection fees and were ready to connect. In the majority of cases, those were wastewater connections. Because they were doing other works and it suited them, the developers would make the connection. We were not sure exactly when those connections were made because the developers did not tell us they were doing it. This gives you the revenue recognition thing. Normally when we take the fee for connection, we recognise the revenue when the connection is made. We would do that when our contractor makes the connection.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Did that happen because the developers felt it was more expedient for them to do it because they were waiting for Irish Water? We can only take what people are telling us about the difficulties with connections. Is that likely to have been the reason?
Mr. Niall Gleeson:
We do not think so because our contractors are very responsive. It is a matter of convenience rather than expediency. As I said, the developers are doing other works. Perhaps they are digging for telecoms or whatever else and decide to throw in the wastewater connection at the same time. That is supposition to some degree on my part. We are investigating. We have done a lot of work around this issue and have investigated the financial side. We have challenges around connections and getting people connected at the right time.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I cannot get my head around this. Was the amount understated?
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
The particular issue here was a control weakness on our side whereby our field engineers completed work on site but did not sign it off. There are two elements to this and I will come to both of them. The engineers did not sign off the work on our system to enable us to show that the performance obligation was complete and we could recognise the revenue. There was €9.9 million there. We do not know whether that related to 2023 or a period prior to that year. However, based on materiality, we have met and discussed the issue with the Comptroller and Auditor General and our external auditors, Deloitte. We have agreed it was not a material number to restate the previous year's accounts. It was below our materiality remit. Since then, we have sought to enhance our controls to ensure this does not happen again. We have worked on that. Last week, we had an audit and risk committee, ARC, meeting and reported the progression with regard to the management letter points we have received from both the Comptroller and Auditor General and Deloitte to ensure we can close them out.
How it all came about was that when our contractors were going out to site, we discovered that some work was being completed by others. The performance obligation was not complete and we still had to go out and inspect. That was what Mr. Gleeson referred to. We had to go out and inspect the work to ensure it was done to our standards and specifications and met our performance obligation. At that stage, we recognised the revenue. The pertinent issue is our internal control issue and we have worked on improving that. The other issue is one we do not like. Nobody should be tampering or interfering with our network. We are very conscious of that. We have written to all developers that have a new connection agreement with us to ensure that does not happen again.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Is there a sanction if there is interference?
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I would hope that Uisce Éireann would be nimble enough to ensure there is no need to do that.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Uisce Éireann has an external auditor, namely, Deloitte. That is presumably for the commercial side.
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
No, we are fully audited by both Deloitte and the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Comptroller and Auditor General will obviously look at specific areas in more detail from a public interest perspective. The external auditor is required under the Companies Act and it does its audit. The Deputy can see both of their opinions.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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What is the cost of the audit for 2023?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is understandable. I call Deputy Verona Murphy.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I want to come back on the wastewater issue. Are the witnesses aware of how many locations have raw sewage discharges?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
There were 44 when Uisce Éireann was formed. We looked at wastewater treatment plants that only had primary treatment and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, added an extra six. At the very start of 2014, we had 50 agglomerations with no treatment. To date, 34 of those have been completed and seven are under construction, including the project at Arklow. When that project is finished, 90% of all unsewered areas by volume will have been treated. That will be done.
The last nine are moving quite slowly. They are the bolts left in the bottom of the bucket and the really hard ones. There are judicial reviews, issues in respect of consent and local opposition, etc.
We will get those ashore at some point but the vast majority of the untreated wastewater from public agglomerations are complete.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Again, the rural scheme is not exhausted. I presume that of the 900, that is down to seven.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Is that regarding water schemes like those the Chair was talking about or is it-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The 900, then, is in relation to what - drinking water or sewage?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Okay, that is fine. Mr. McCarthy made an interesting comment with regard to the laying of pipes in conjunction with other works. When a new road is being constructed here in Ireland, is Uisce Éireann a stakeholder in that in providing a utility, at that time?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Putting the infrastructure in place.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Is that not in all cases?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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How does it work? Does Uisce Éireann notify them? Is it TII in conjunction with Uisce Éireann, or how does that work? For instance, I am interested in the upgrade of the N11. There are 33 km that will go and finish it right into Rosslare. Obviously, it is a commercial corridor. Has Uisce Éireann been involved in that process to date? Does Mr. Gleeson know? I am springing this on him but to me, it would make common sense. This is how the Germans do it. If you open a road in Germany, every utility goes in and it never gets opened again except for repairs. Are we not operating a similar system?
Ms Maria O'Dwyer:
Our national water resources plan and our four regional water resources plans would set out how we want to interconnect water supply zones into the future. That is probably based on a very detailed study we would have undertaken for all our water supplies nationally. The distance the Deputy is talking about there is quite considerable. If you were to bring this back to a smaller road, my understanding is local authority staff would typically reach out to ourselves if they thought that was a good idea or made sense, in which case we would usually take it back into our own asset planning section and see if there is a need or a justification.
Our biggest challenge here is that there is such significant need and requirements we are already aware of with regard to the public money we are receiving. We are aware of a lot of challenges from treatment plants. When it comes to prioritising this, if that particular area is well served at the moment then it would not be a high priority for us because we have greater need for the money in the short term.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Clearly it is not from that perspective. We know Rosslare has a high requirement. I understand what Ms O'Dwyer is saying. Essentially though, what she is telling me is we do not operate that system, at least not yet, whereby if we were building roads - for instance, if the Cahir bypass was to go ahead and all of that - we are not saying we are going to build it and put in the electricity, water, gas or whatever. We are not.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I appreciate that but has it been ever mooted that this is the way we should be doing it?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
We do work with TII and local authorities, and we have had examples, namely, the BusConnects corridor and the work in Clontarf recently. What we would do is engage with the main funding body. We would agree our requirements and then put them in funds to carry the work out for us if there is an upgrade or replacement at the time. It is not always appropriate, as Ms O'Dwyer has said. They are quite localised. We also work with EirGrid where it is looking now at changing the high-voltage system around the greater Dublin area. We are looking for synergies there as well.
On moving large amounts of water very long distances, it is a good idea but ultimately you want the water to arrive in a condition that is potable. Sometimes it is appropriate.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I appreciate that. I am talking about value for money from the perspective of having to go back and do it, and often we see that, where we are going back and opening roads.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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In that, what is the lifetime of a polyethylene pipe that Uisce Éireann is using?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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So we have moved on significantly too. I am just trying to say-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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-----from a value-for-money perspective, every time something is under construction from an infrastructure perspective, we need to look at getting in as much as we can.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Okay. That is what I am talking about, essentially.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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With regard to the issue of-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Before the Chair starts, I had one other question as to what the timeline was for a connection, from request to connection, on a domestic premises. Say self-builds or otherwise, or developers.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Where is Uisce Éireann on that target?
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Any questions around the costings need to be with the regulator then?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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From Ms O'Dwyer's answer, I take it that she indicated that there would be a certain amount of synergy with local authorities and EirGrid. It is welcome to hear that because people find it frustrating when a new road is put down, and the next thing is that a year later, it is dug up again. It is one of the things that public representatives hear the whole time.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I know, and I take on board the points made by Ms O'Dwyer's colleague Mr. Laffey. The N11 is the example being given, and I am kind of familiar with it. It is being run down to Rosslare. Sometimes there may or may not be a need for a pipe to be put in but I think, from the replies I was following, it would appear that there is maybe not such a great connection with TII and Uisce Éireann. Maybe it is not as good as it is with the county councils, would that be right?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Of course. TII is building roads though, significant roads around the country.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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With regard to harmonising things and usage, I think that is important. All along the N7 at the moment, I see another set of pipes have gone in. There is machinery working there for months on it, with the lane closed off. In other words, we wind up retrofitting things in this country. Instead, EirGrid, Uisce Éireann, local authorities, TII and Eircom need to be on the one page.
Mr. Sean Laffey:
We do and to be honest, Chair, in an ideal world that would be perfect. The difficulty I have - and I go back to the previous Deputy - is that I could put money into the N7 and a pipe that I might need in five years' time, or I could replace the pipe to Ballyhooly, which is actually answering an issue that exists today.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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On that, when we look at the €14 billion we have from Apple, that is the type of infrastructure requirement whereby you are saving a stitch in time, effectively, by doing that. I am not saying that, given Mr. Laffey's example, but if we have pipes that are now good for 70 years, it probably is the preparation that is required. Would Mr. Laffey be making that case and those types of proposals to Government, that we could do with infrastructural planning that is not necessarily going to be used?
I understand Uisce Éireann has a huge task. Replacing the Irish network has-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Wastewater is one of the priorities-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Yes, but with Uisce Éireann's current funding.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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-----with its slice of the Apple money. Would that be right?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
I will say a small bit about how we prioritise. We can see roughly €50 billion to €60 billion worth of work to bring our networks and wastewater and water treatment plants up to good standard.
Just so the committee understands, our networks and systems are live, meaning that every single day we have entropy. Things are deteriorating, the network is getting older and our plants are getting older. Plants that are currently compliant have capacity. The headroom is being eaten up by growth so that will have to be replaced. Two years ago, we got new regulations and requirements from the European Union which have been put into law. The goalposts have therefore changed and will change again next year for wastewater. The need is constant and the churn is constant.
If we were to get a capital investment programme of €10 billion, given that in every single area the priorities are so pointed and needed, we would essentially end up splitting it four ways between water, wastewater, network and treatment. In our heads, we have to keep an holistic view. If somebody said there was €13 billion available for water main rehabilitation and those types of plans the Deputy spoke about, we could certainly put those in place. Unfortunately, the demand across all of the asset base is so large that we can only hit the highest of them - things like compliance, growth, European Court of Justice cases, etc.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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All I can say is, "Thank God for the European Court of Justice."
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Now that we have the Commissionership, that is even more important.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I hope the Deputy was not one of the those who were in favour of handing the money back and who are now saying where we should spend it.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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No. On a serious note, I can see there are challenges.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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What is the cost of new connections? This is an issue that comes up. Whether it is for one-off housing or housing schemes, the cost of connections has gone up substantially. How is that calculated? Is there a fixed amount? For example, if Joe Bloggs is building a house and needs a water connection, is there a set charge and then so much per metre charged for piping? How is that calculated?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
In line with the CRU's connection policy, there is a set amount if the water or wastewater connection is within 10 m of the network. It does not matter if the house is right beside a small rural road or beside a national road and a line has to be cut across the road to the far side. It is a set amount. Once you get outside-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Is that 10 m from the site or from the actual building?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is 10 m from the boundary of the site. The person building the house is responsible for the connections inside the site out to the boundary. From the boundary out, if it is 10 m, how much does it cost?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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A lot of these would not need wastewater because in rural areas-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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-----they have stand-alone septic tanks. What happens where the distance is more than 10 m?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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For the water supply first.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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What if there is a road opening? Is there licensing?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
We would have to go to the local authority. Even if it is only 10 m away, we still have to go to the local authority and ask for a road-opening licence. It will have its terms and conditions. If we go across a road and cut a trench in, we reinstate not just the trench but 5 m either side of the trench to make sure the road is kept integral. If we have to go down the road, in the track of a road sometimes we have to do a half-width restoration just to get the pipe connection down the road. That is very expensive.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It costs €2,300 for-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is for supply only, just to clarify that.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Some of the costs are coming in extremely high at short distances. Maybe Uisce Éireann has a framework agreement with contractors. There were discussions in this complex yesterday around contractors and the pricing of jobs. It is widely acknowledged that it is a great time to be a contractor, particularly where they are contracting to public bodies. In this case, the cost comes back to a private individual and they are substantial. That needs to be looked at.
On connections and accounting for them after the event, the reason that was set out to us was that it was because of contractors going ahead and doing the connections and then registering them the following year. Is Mr. Laffey saying they are making connections, even to the sewer, without Uisce Éireann knowing about it.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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They are putting a saddle on the sewer and putting the pipe up to it.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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They may just be putting a saddle onto it for an individual connection.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The developers complain - we hear this - that they are waiting too long.
There was a recent outage in Mountmellick and no notice was given. I am sure the witnesses' ears were red because of this when local public representatives got onto them. People in the area were not given any notice of a substantial outage for a substantial period of time. What happened there? Where did the breakdown occur?
Ms Margaret Attridge:
Unfortunately, there was a normal reactive burst in the area and the crew went out to fix it. An outage went up and the crew went out to fix it and repair the burst. In doing that, crews will try to optimise the network to keep supply to as many people as possible when they are shutting down. The crew found another leak in one of the valves on the network. The next day they came back and there was another outage because they had to come back and repair the leaking valve. Supply was then returned to normal, or so they thought. What manifested was that the next day the supply did not return to normal. When the crew went out to investigate, all the valves were the way they should be and they could not understand what happened. Separately, in another part of the network, there were works progressing by a third-party contractor and some valve there had impacted on supply. Unfortunately, the outage in that area went on for a lot longer than was planned or would have been expected. It resulted in significant outages. We had to supply tankered water to a nursing home and school in the area. It was unfortunate. The people on the ground did their best but it was not picked up that there was some remote work happening at the same time.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It was an unfortunate sequence of events. Local communication was again a problem. I will not go back over it. Ms Attridge will have heard it already from Laois county councillors. There was a substantial communication problem and a lack of communications. I am saying that so that Uisce Éireann will address it.
In terms of developments in counties, Wexford has been mentioned. Kildare is within the commuter belt to a greater extent than Laois but Laois is now in the commuter belt. All towns and villages, particularly outside Portlaoise, are to be considered for rezoning to build more houses, but only if there are services, such as water and sewerage, available. Mountrath, Mountmellick, Rathdowney, Stradbally, Durrow and Abbeyleix need capacity upgrades both in terms of supply and wastewater capacity. Councillors are doing the county development plan. There needs to be some joined-up thinking here. Councillors have been critical of the lack of focus on those six or seven towns outside of Portlaoise that I mentioned. The management of the council say rural areas that have already been serviced will be considered, in other words, smaller towns, and it will look for additional lands in Stradbally, Durrow, Abbeyleix and every town and village. It said it will consider parcels of land but it has to operate within a population target and projections in the county development plan. It states that in rural areas it has to look at serviced land and it is looking at urban areas more so. Irish Water and the lack of infrastructure in towns were blamed for arresting development. This occurred at a council meeting. I am not quoting verbatim but I am trying to give a reflection of what happened at the meeting.
The previous census showed that Laois is the second fasted growing area outside the capital in terms of percentage population increase. This is putting huge pressure on schools. I was contacted by people from the Portlaoise area again this week.
They moved in and bought houses that were advertised. They now have nine-, ten- or 12-year-old children who cannot get into school and they end up on our doorstep to try to sort this out. There are all of the other problems that come with that, such as GPs and everything else. Water services are a problem. I acknowledge the water has improved. The council has done great work and Uisce Éireann had a hand in it as well. The quality is excellent in a lot of areas. However, there is a capacity issue with supply of water and with wastewater. Will someone tell me what will happen here? On the one hand councillors are rezoning because there is pressure to rezone land. The county council has to have a development plan in place and bring it up to date. There is pressure on for housing The Government and every one of us are shouting for more housing because we need to build between 50,000 and 60,000 homes per year, whether they are houses or apartments. The population is increasing rapidly. If we do not have water supply - water in and water out - we are in trouble.
Taking County Laois as an example, what will happen there? How can we address this? What joined-up thinking is there between Uisce Éireann, council management and the cathaoirleach of the council? Councillors need to be brought into the loop on this.
Mr. Sean Laffey:
Uisce Éireann has a forward planning section in asset management. It engages with all the local authority planners when preparing local area plans or county or city development plans. We also engage very closely with the regional assemblies on the regional spatial and economic strategies, RSESs. We are involved in that whole area. We see the pressure that is on to provide housing and the necessity for water and wastewater services.
We have capacity registers which talk about locations where we have capacity in water and-or wastewater treatment. Ultimately, if we have to extend the network, it is far easier to do so and bring water or wastewater services to a site than it is to upgrade a water or wastewater treatment plant. The issue we have is twofold. One part of it is that even if tomorrow I said that I would add an extra 5,000 cu. m per day to the Abbeyleix water treatment plant, the reality of the environment in which we operate is that is probably seven years away, to be perfectly honest about it. We cannot turn these things on at the touch of a button. In the submission we made on the national planning framework to the Department we are really asking for a very focused plan-led view of the whole country. Local area and county development plans are done on a five-year cycle. We invest on a seven- to ten-year cycle and what we need to be able to say is that we will push the button on Abbeyleix, there will be 5,000 cu. m of water there in seven years' time and the focus will still be on Abbeyleix; it will not have moved to Mountrath.
If we are going to develop and build houses at the scale the Government would like us to build, we have to currently focus on where we have capacity and then strategically plan to put capacity into other areas so it is available when the existing capacity is used up.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I understand and I know that the capacity of receiving waters - in other words, where the sewage goes into whatever stream or river - always has to be factored in and that sometimes restricts it. Can I make a suggestion in the case of the various counties? Mr. Laffey mentioned the regional assemblies. I know they have a role in setting the overall national planning framework and all of that, but it is really at the county councils that the business is done. Mr. Laffey mentioned that some areas may have spare capacity in terms of water in and out and it would be good if that could be picked up. It would be very useful if that information could be supplied to the councillors who have to make the county or city development plans because it is their call in terms of-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I was not aware of that. That is useful to know, that we can see a town or village and say there are 500 homes there at the moment. I think it is done on the basis of population equivalent, PE.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It has capacity for 5,000 people already but has spare capacity for another 2,000 people. That is the type of information that needs to be flagged. I know it is on Uisce Éireann's website but it would be useful if it was brought to the attention of councillors at county council meetings. It would be very helpful in giving people an overall picture and would identify capacity. The flip-side of it is to also identify areas that are under capacity and where the population has gone over capacity. For example, in Mountmellick there are significant pressures. Additional capacity was added a good few years but there are problems there with the capacity of the sewer.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Bringing a one-page or two-page document for the attention of each county council at their monthly meeting would be useful.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I want to finish pursuing the issue of water that has not been accounted for. Uisce Éireann has a target to meet and is making some progress but a lot more is needed. I presume Uisce Éireann has mapped it out. It would not be making that progress if it was not doing so. What are the worst areas of the country in terms of water that has not been accounted for? What are the top five or six investments that would make a big difference in reaching that target? Are there locations for such investment?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
Uisce Éireann has indicative water leakage rates for every local authority area across the country and we have indicative water leakage rates for every water resource zone we have. It might sound a bit counterintuitive but we do not necessarily go to the water resource zones that have the worst leakage because there might be more than adequate water there to serve the population, the supply might not be under stress and the production cost of the water might be quite low. Where we focus is on areas that are under pressure from growth. The greater Dublin area, GDA, springs to mind in that regard. That is where we will be focusing.
People talk about leakage like it is a very simple thing but, looking at the greater Dublin area, there is 18,000 km of water network. If we find a leak in Temple Bar today that has 1 million l of water leaking and we fix it, one of four things will happen. First, the pressure goes up on the local network and every other leak leaks a bit more. Second, when someone turns their tap on, instead of getting 5 l of water per minute they will now get 7 l. Third, and this happens quite regularly, is that the network down the line comes under greater pressure and it breaks. Fourth, with consistent and persistent application of leakage management, find and fix and capital we will eventually see the dial at the treatment plant go back so we are gaining on leakage. In some areas in Dublin we have had to find 7 Ml of water in the network just to turn the dial 1 Ml back at the plant. It is a very complex piece of work. We have committed funding and will commit funding but it is a difficult, steady and persistent push and slog. That is all it is.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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If looking at the greater Dublin area, that is the like of Fingal where there are a lot of new pipes. In County Meath there is a mixture of new and older pipes and County Kildare is pretty much the same. There is also County Wicklow and south Dublin where there are a lot of new pipes and a lot of development. It does not have the same profile as Dublin city. Is the city still the worst area in this regard?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
The age of pipes is not an indicator. The pipe coming down from the Vartry was built in 1869 and it is one of the best pipes we have. There is stuff that was laid by developers in the early 2000s which is absolutely falling apart. All we can do is look at our district metering areas and the leakage rates in those areas and then target them.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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During the Celtic tiger period there was not enough oversight. If shortcuts were taken, they were taken underground where they would not be seen. I am not surprised this is turning up as an issue. What is the oversight now? Does Irish Water have oversight? What amount does it put into oversight to make sure we will not see a repeat of that?
Mr. Sean Laffey:
I suspect this is one of the reasons we hear complaints about Uisce Éireann taking so long. If a housing estate is being put in, the housing estate design must be submitted for our approval before a bucket is allowed to be put in the ground. As the bucket is put into the ground, our field engineers will go out and quality assure what is being put into the ground. It is pressure tested. Everything is done before we allow the connection to take place and we take it on. We do not want any new network connected to the existing network to become a burden on the taxpayer's purse.
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Mr. Laffey cannot answer the question I asked. In a roundabout way he has said that there are not five or ten top projects.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is okay. He is still in the business.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I suppose that is where the frustration of developers comes from because that level of inspection does take time. They probably do not give Uisce Éireann the requisite time that is needed and then delays ensue. We could all work better at that.
I want to speak about a comment made on the reality of understanding that what Uisce Éireann is looking for is seven years away. In 2019, a letter issued stating there would be an access point for the wastewater treatment plant in Authurstown and there would be an access pipe for Ramsgrange in 2019. That has been in being for the past six years. The school has been developing, as has the area. We are six years in and probably still three years away from a connection. I can see what the timeline is but there has to be a way to prioritise certain projects. It is very frustrating to know that I was not even elected in 2019 but I asked to ensure there was access, knowing the area I was living in. To be fair, it was issued from Irish Water to Wexford County Council and it is there on record. It goes back to 2019. The witnesses might take back that there has to be recognition. If something is mooted it has to be put onto a project plan. This is just to go back and join the dots with projects.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Do we have the figure for the highest bonus to a staff member?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Before finishing up I want to ask about the issue in Cork. The Whitegate plant is under construction, which is good. What is the timeline for it to be completed?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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With regard to the water supplying the area, people have been on a boil water notice for a long time. Almost 10,000 people have been affected by it. For how much longer will the boil water notice last in east Cork?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We are looking at another two years, unfortunately.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I want to convey something to Uisce Éireann which other Deputies have asked me to raise. This is a big issue locally and there needs to be some communication on it. It is unfortunate that it will take another two years. People in the area have been on boil water notices for a long time. The witnesses might take that back.
In Wicklow there was an uncontrolled release into three trout streams in Delgany on 21 August. This is believed to be as a result of a pump failure at the Delgany pumping station and wastewater treatment plant. Deputy Brady, who is a member of the committee but cannot be here this morning, asked me to raise this matter. There have not been satisfactory answers on what is happening. Obviously, local people are very concerned. Pollution levels seem to be increasing and there have been significant fish kills. The witnesses have acknowledged the plant does not have the capacity to cope with future planned developments in the area. With regard to assessments, what is the outcome for the area in Delgany?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The assessment of the incident and-----
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I ask Mr. Gleeson to do so, please.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I ask Mr. Gleeson to come back to the committee on this. Is there a plan in place to address capacity in the area?
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I presume the plan will cope with future development because there is future development planned for the area.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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My understanding, if I heard correctly earlier, is that Uisce Éireann has a €1 billion loan facility to the end of 2024 and it looks like it will be maxed out. Is that correct? What provision is in place for 2025? How will that operate?
Mr. Chris McCarthy:
Deputy Murphy is absolutely correct that it will be maxed out by the end of this year. There is a future funding working group. It is a combination of Uisce Éireann, its parent Department, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, the CRU, the Department of Finance and NewERA, working through this to see what the future holds and what part of our funding we expect. We need funding, the form of which we do not yet know. However, as part of our RC4 determination, which we expect mid next year, we expect the funding to be-----
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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The middle of next year.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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It should be addressed in the budget and there will be no delays because of it.
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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I am sure. That is very good. I thank the witnesses.
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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There is a lot of information and some follow-up on which the witnesses can come back to the committee. I hope some of the exchanges have been useful. I know it can be a bit robust and combative at times but that is the nature of it. We are talking about the people's money and we have to try to protect it. We get it in the ear if we do not do it. I wish Irish Water well with it. The suggestions made by the members have been made in genuine way and perhaps some of them can be taken on board. Communication makes the world go around and it can also stop the world from going around. I ask that that be taken on board.
I thank the witnesses. I thank the staff of Uisce Éireann and Mr. Munnelly from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage for the work in preparing for today's meeting and for attending. I also thank Mr. Seamus McCarthy, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and his staff for attending and assisting the committee today.
Is it agreed that the clerk will seek any follow-up information and carry out any agreed actions for the meeting? Agreed. Is it also agreed that we note and publish the opening statements and briefings for today's meeting? Agreed.
We will now suspend until 1.30 p.m. when we will resume in public session to address correspondence and other business of the committee. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.