Cllr. Ormond calls for halt to Irish Water

Cllr. Peter Ormond is calling on the government to suspend Irish Water and revert back to the current system whereby the local authorities look at water.  While I was astonished to hear last week that over €50 million was spend on consultancy alone, one has to ask the following questions. Who set up Irish Water and what was the need for it? The local authorities of this country have done an excellent job in the past along with local group water schemes in providing quality water to homes.

Cllr. Ormond stated that the local authorities have the expertise and the staff to deal with the issue of supplying water. Irish water strips away these functions from local authorities and places them in this new agency.  What we have seen here is an agency that is running to hundreds of million of euros alone in just setting up. The people of this country will commence paying water charges in early 2015. We all want to see value for money and to see that our money is spent in a transparent and appropriate manner.

Under current government plans, costs are estimated to rage from between €100 and €300 per household without a clear plan for the overall upgrade of the network.

In the past few years, there has been a decrease in capital money available to carry out improvements in our infrastructure, yet we have all this money been spent on consultants and the setting up of Irish Water. We would like to hear from Irish Water and to see their business plan and to hear how they are hoing to recoup this money. The obvious answer at present is that the public is going to pay for this, which is totally unacceptable.

Its never to late to say stop and I call on the government to do this immediately.