No agreement on Irish Water deal
Plan to transfer jobs from councils not approved yet
A PLAN to transfer local authorities’ involvement in running water services to Irish Water does not have the approval of councils, a union has warned.
The Irish Water Business Plan outlines a set of proposals that Irish Water has said will achieve €1.6billion in savings.
But unions say one planned proposal – which Irish Water hopes will save €70million a year – could lead to the loss of 1,000 jobs through the cancellation of Service Level Agreements with local authorities.
Peter Nolan, head of the local government division of Fórsa trade union, said that there has been no agreement with local authorities on the future of SLAs. ‘We have a commitment that the SLAs will stay in place until an alternative is agreed. Those SLAs are due to continue to 2026,’ said Mr Nolan.
The plan by Irish Water aims to save €1.1billion through a combination of reducing the costs of repairs and maintenance, payroll, energy, contracting, and existing industry overhead. A further €500million will be saved through a capital programme that includes optimising existing assets and centralising procurement.
The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government said in a statement yesterday that Minister Eoghan Murphy recently asked the director of the Workplace Relations Commission to provide him with a short report outlining the key concerns of Irish Water and the unions.
‘This process is underway and commenced with a joint meeting of all parties on July 5,’ the statement read. ‘As part of this process, the Minister has again given assurance that the current Service Level Agreements arrangements between Irish Water and local authorities remain in place until such time as an alternative is agreed.’
The department added that over the course of 2017, Irish Water’s parent company, Ervia, had made the decision to not renew SLAs past 2025.
The issue is all the more urgent because of a proposed separation of Irish Water from its parent company.
According to Ervia, the Government has decided that Irish Water would become a standalone publicly owned, commercial, regulated utility separate from the Ervia Group.
The process of separating the two entities will take until 2023 according to Mr Murphy.
Mr Nolan said that Fórsa will also meet with the Department of Local Government at the WRC to discuss the proposals to create a single public service utility.
Mr Nolan also said that he does not want, or expect, any compulsory redundancies being put on the table.
‘We are expecting correspondence from the Department of Housing. Next Thursday, we meet with the WRC to discuss proposals to create a single public service utility,’ he said.
‘We are expecting some information from the department... but my expectation would be that there would be no compulsory redundancies attached to any of these arrangements,’ he added.