Uisce Éireann has said that it will be 2050 before the “known issues” in the State’s water and wastewater systems are addressed, at a cost of up to €60 billion.
Speaking at an Oireachtas committee on Wednesday, the utility’s infrastructure delivery director Maria O’Dwyer said it needed between €55 billion and €60 billion at a “minimum level of investment” between now and 2050 to address the known issues it is aware of today in water and wastewater.
“This is going to take a number of decades just to address all the challenges that are out there,” she told Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín at the Oireachtas infrastructure committee.
Sean Laffey, Uisce Éireann’s asset management and sustainability director, said it wasn’t anyone’s fault that things take so long, it was simply the way the processes evolved.
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He said it was “fine” at a lower population level, but given the need to run different consenting processes sequentially as opposed to in parallel, there was currently an impediment to fast delivery.
In a statement after the committee meeting, Meath West TD Mr Tóibín said the timescale was “shocking news” and that water constraints would “play a part in slowing house building for the next 25 years”.
The utility’s executives told the committee it would spend €1.5 billion this year, with a need for €12.3 billion over the next five years – €2 billion of which it has sought since the Government announced new housing targets.
However, the committee heard that companies that work on similar contracts in the UK have greater certainty about long-term investments from utilities there.
This is a challenge, Uisce Éireann said, due to the structure of its funding cycle, which relies on annual budgetary allocations rather than multiyear funding, meaning it can offer less certainty to companies in its supply chain. Niall Gleeson, chief executive of Uisce Éireann, said the company had a “tacit promise” of €10.3 billion from Government, but was dependent on annual votes for yearly budgets, and was awaiting to hear back about its further €2 billion ask.
“If you were in the private sector, you wouldn’t be running a construction company like that,” he said.
Mr Laffey said climate impacts were a “significant concern”, with greater periods of rainfall intensity leading to more surface runoff which depleted groundwater supplies that rivers rely on. This, in turn, meant rivers are predicted to run low, which might lead to less capacity to take wastewater. It meant that more mountainous areas would be challenging to supply with water in the future, he said, such as Kerry, Wicklow, Mayo and Donegal.
The committee heard of the importance of a new water supply project running from the Shannon to the Greater Dublin Area. The capital, Mr Laffey said, is like a “black hole” for water and is overly dependent on the Liffey. The pipeline would improve security for Dublin, but also allow assets currently serving the capital to be redirected to other towns, improving security there.
“The longer it takes us to start that project, the more expensive it’s going to be,” Mr Gleeson said.
Mr Laffey said that if anything ever happened to the Liffey, such as a pollution incident, 85 per cent of the water into Dublin “would be gone”, and that the pipeline was needed for climate resilience as well.
[ Analysis: How vital water project stalled for years over minor paperwork issueOpens in new window ]
Uisce Éireann also criticised the nature of the funding cycle that the Government has chosen for the utility, which relies on year-on-year allocations in each budget, arguing for a multiannual funding structure rather than annual allocations.
Mr Gleeson told the committee that it takes five to seven years to get through all stages of a straightforward capital project, but seven to 10 years for more complex projects, and more than a decade for very complex investments.
“Reforms to planning and consenting regulations are needed urgently to ensure we can deliver vital infrastructure efficiently and continue to grant connections for new homes and businesses,” the committee heard.
Mr Gleeson reiterated that the utility wants its infrastructure projects prioritised by An Bord Pleanála. A litany of issues affecting the Greater Dublin Area will also be detailed, which it says has significant implications for Ireland’s competitiveness and population.
