A fancy ad campaign and new jobs for 700
But €1bn-spending Irish Water’s leaky pipes record still worst in EU
IRISH Water is now spending €1bn a year – but Ireland still wastes more water supplies than any other country in the EU, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
And the national water authority – now called Uisce Éireann – admits it will be another six years before Europe’s wettest country no longer holds the record for losing the most water to broken pipes.
It comes as the State agency, now 10 years old, has launched a massive recruitment campaign to almost double its original workforce, while at the same time making an unprecedented wintertime public appeal urging householders to reduce their water use.
In an interview with the MoS, Uisce Éireann’s asset strategy manager, Angela Ryan, said: ‘We have supply and demand issues across all of our supplies, and that would not be normal across Europe… major global centres across Europe have very, very resilient supplies, but we don’t have that resilience.
‘If we have high demand for water… we are tapping into our water reserves and after that we have to have escalation measures.
‘In Europe they probably don’t have to do that at this time of year. They would have more reserve capacity and they would have a spare water treatment plan.
‘We don’t have that now. We have to address supply and demand balance by bringing improved supply and reducing our demand for water,’ she added.
Before Irish Water was set up a decade ago, local councils were responsible for maintaining water supplies in their areas.
According to Ms Ryan, an estimated €300m was invested each year on improving the country’s 63,000 kilometres of pipes.
This figure has more than trebled since Irish Water took over the country’s supplies, but the hugely increased investment has not brought about the changes the utility hoped it would.
According to the most recently available statistics, 605 million litres of the 1,700 million litres of water pumped through the country’s water pipes every day literally go down the drain, never making it to the kitchen tap. This means the national leakage rate is still well above 30%, despite the significant rise in taxpayer funding.
On any given day in the Greater Dublin Area, up to 32% of water supplies is lost to leaking pipes. Angela Ryan told the MoS: ‘The national leakage rate is in the order of 38%, and in the Greater Dublin Area it is 32%.
‘Again, compared to international norms, that’s quite high. There is no harmonising way of measuring leakage across Europe but in general it would be [in urban areas] about 20%, and in high performance areas in Germany and France it would be in the order of 14%. ‘It’s [Irish leakage rates] still high compared to those norms, but we are looking to get that down to 20% in 2030 in the Greater Dublin Area and to bring it down to about 25% nationally,’ she said.
‘So within the next six years [we are looking] to be aligned more with European norms.’ According to these figures, Uisce Éireann will reduce the number of leaks in the greater Dublin area by only a little over 1% a year, and by about 2% nationwide.
The agency’s ambition to replace troublesome pipes is also modest. Over the past decade, it has managed to replace just 2% of the country’s 63,000km of pipes, which works out at 600 kilometres every five years.
Uisce Éireann revealed that it has spent €9bn over the past decade since it was set up.
A spokesman added that €1bn was spent last year and that it plans to keep spending a similar amount over the coming years.
Asked about how much it will cost to recruit 700 new staff, which will almost double its workforce in the space of just three years, a spokesman would only say: ‘Uisce Éireann this week announced 700 new roles, spanning a range of disciplines and offering a chance for professionals, tradespeople at all levels, recent graduates and skilled workers to contribute to their local communities while building rewarding careers.
‘Uisce Éireann is committed to providing ongoing training, and attractive compensation and benefits packages to ensure a secure and fulfilling work experience. This is the largest recruitment announcement made by Uisce Éireann to date and reflects the scope and scale of the activities we are carrying out nationwide.’
Although the utility insists it has improved water quality since taking over responsibility from local authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA] issued a damning criticism of Uisce Éireann in its most recent wastewater treatment report.
The State’s environmental watchdog concluded: ‘While Uisce Éireann is making progress, it is concerning that Ireland has still not met all its obligations under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, some 30 years after it was required to bring provisions into force to comply with the directive.
‘Uisce Éireann is taking too long to identify and deliver the works needed to resolve environmental issues at many other areas and is still in the preliminary stages of designing action plans for around one third of the priority areas.
‘Uisce Éireann must expedite this work and allocate funding to complete the necessary improvements,’ the EPA said.
‘In addition to building treatment infrastructure, it is essential to have effective and well-resourced maintenance programmes for the existing assets and to operate and manage treatment infrastructure so it always performs at its best.’
‘We have supply and demand issues’
‘Ireland still hasn’t met all of its obligations’