Water: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

We urgently need to invest in our decrepit water infrastructure. It is totally inadequate to deal with the housing needs we have, with almost half of the water leaking out of the pipes because of Victorian and decrepit infrastructure. We need a water system that is responsive to the needs of people rather than one that refuses to get back to or talk to the public or its representatives.
Instead of doing what is necessary to address this, the Government is essentially engaged in a stealth privatisation of the water infrastructure to facilitate private, for-profit interests. Where is the evidence to back that up? The most recently available annual statement of Irish Water is for 2024. The single biggest item in operating costs in Irish water for that year, and I presume it is the same in more recent years, at a cost of €335 million, was hired and contracted services. It lists the companies, private builders and contractors within that.
We have had a stealth privatisation through the back door. That, of course, is why the Government does not want to have the referendum it promised after we successfully defeated the attempt to introduce domestic water charges through mass mobilisation and resistance. We won a commitment which has been reneged on, to have a referendum to ensure that the water infrastructure would stay in public ownership. The reason Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have not wanted to do that is because they are representing these builders and contractors who want to loot the Irish water infrastructure and are progressively privatising Irish Water through the back door.
What is the cost of all of this in terms of the quality of water services? We are told the Minister, Deputy James Browne’s officials told him at the beginning of this year that Irish Water is having to clean up the mess left by small, private contractors doing wastewater infrastructure projects around the country. They are making a bags of them in a huge number of cases because we do not have the local authority workers who are actually experts, who were working directly for and accountable to the public. They were redeployed and all of that expertise was lost. It has been handed over to private contractors profiteering from our water infrastructure. In many cases, as the Minister has been told, they cannot even do the job properly.
There is also the lack of funding, which is part of a deliberate strategy to run down our publicly-run water infrastructure. We have been told we need 60,000 houses a year but Irish Water has only been given the money for infrastructure for 30,000 houses a year. Then, of course, there is the creaming off of the top for the big salaries Deputy Healy talked about. That is something that would not be happening if it was with the local authorities for which we argued at the time Irish Water was set up.
Let us have the referendum that was promised and give the whole thing back to the local authorities, the people who have the expertise and will run it on a not-for-profit basis. Let us put in the investment necessary to deliver the housing and deal with the decrepit water and wastewater infrastructure.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21