The major improvement in life expectancy experienced since the early 19th century owes a great deal to the provision of clean water and sewerage systems.

The first big investment in water services in Ireland was in the 1860s when Dublin Corporation developed the Vartry system to bring water from Wicklow to the city.*

However, from the start, the plans were dogged by a lack of co-operation between local authorities, with the rich township of Rathmines opting out, leaving the poor of the inner city to shoulder the bill.

This pattern of fragmented provision of services persisted for 150 years, with responsibility for provision of water and sewerage left to individual local authorities, rather than having an overall national plan.

The establishment of the ESB in 1927 created a national electricity network, and Bord Gáis consolidated a series of local gas companies in the 1980s, but it has taken until now for water and sewerage services to be put on a national footing.

Relying on more than 30 local authorities to do the job resulted in duplication, high costs and a failure to plan coherently. One of the first tasks for Irish Water has been to move from fragmented local systems to a single national system. In principle, this should bring economies of scale, provided staffing costs reflect what is needed to deliver a unified service, rather than multiple local services.

Too much of today’s water and sewerage network dates back to the early years of its installation, with pipework and other infrastructure that has reached the end of its useful life.

Catastrophic effects

The real level of investment in water services has fluctuated considerably over the last 20 years. Investing in systems that lie underground and that have been taken for granted has lacked the political visibility that attached to overground infrastructure such as roads. This factor, along with fragmented planning and delivery, has contributed to persistent underinvestment.

The result has been that too many households have been experiencing poor pressure or boil water notices, and lack of modern sewage treatment has seriously affected the quality of our waterways. The standard of our systems has fallen behind what other developed economies enjoy.

The water supply for more than half the households in the State has been listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as needing remedial action. Irish Water has identified 180,000 households that have a potential problem with lead contamination. At the beginning of 2015, 23,000 households still had to boil their water before use.

As Irish Water’s business plan** shows, we have a system that is totally unsatisfactory for our current needs.

Under successive national development plans, a detailed methodology was developed to plan the road infrastructure. However, no corresponding national framework was available to guide investment in water supply and sewerage. Only 60 per cent of the sewerage pipes in the country are actually mapped. An overriding concern to achieve compliance with the EU’s waste water directive and to avoid costly fines was the nearest we got to prioritising this.

For the first time, Irish Water’s business plan provides a comprehensive strategy to develop a water and sewerage system for Ireland that would eventually be fit for purpose. If achieved, by 2021 it will deliver significant improvement relative to where we are today.

While Ireland is blessed with an abundance of rainfall, there are significant costs in treating water to make it drinkable and to get it into people’s homes. Effective sewage disposal is also costly, and for too long we have been content to pipe it out to sea or to inland waterways after minimal treatment, polluting our coastline, lakes and rivers.

Serious money

The undoubted mistakes made in the establishment of Irish Water should not be allowed to jeopardise the pace of future investment by continuing to underfund its vital services. As long as the lion’s share of funding comes from general taxation, rather than from those who benefit from the services, either the level of spending and investment plans will be constrained or the pressure on scarce taxpayer funds will be excessive.

Development levies

Yet historically the contribution made by landowners has been minimal for the vital services that helped turn their land holdings from low-value farmland to fabulously priced development land. Indeed, at the height of the rezoning frenzy of the 1980s in Dublin, development levies were only charged as a fraction of the financial contribution made by the council towards the provision of sanitary services, with no co-funding of the central government spend.

Reduction or abolition of development levies is now being advanced as a strategy to encourage the resumption of housing development. However, in the long run, giving developers a free ride on the services that enrich the value of their land holdings does not make sense.

* http://bit.ly/1QlKl9P Water, Drainage, People and Hertigage by Engineers Ireland, March 2007

** https://www.water.ie/docs/Irish-Water-Business-Plan.pdf