So they are overstaffed, just like every other semi-state, what did you expect?
Unlike many other semi-states they are doing a good job.
FG mugged the middle class and never touched the banks.
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Unlike many other semi-states they are doing a good job.
It *was* setup and *is* funded with about the maximum deliberate pain inflicted on ordinary Irish people... It failed the EU capitalization test which is what the whole scam with the back of an envelope charges was about from the get go.
I wasn't aware that the previous bodies (in Dublin at least) responsible for water were doing a bad job, except for the obvious 40% lost through dodgy pipes. And we didn't need irish water and meters outside every home to tackle that, especially not an Irish water that fails the EU test.
This was a BRAND new set up, clean slate so to speak. It was an opportunity to exceed expectations of the general population. A "statement enterprise" by the government to say "although we are stuck with setting up Irish water, lets do the best job we can"
They could have redefined what a "state body" could be / should be. Yet, from the outset they stumbled along, shooting themselves in the foot, and continue to stumble, surprised they have any toes left to shoot!
What pain exactly? I pay considerably more to have electricity supplied to my house by Electricity Ireland (even though there is no need for treatment of "waste" electricity 
, it should cost half of what my water services cost!). It failed the EU capitalisation tests because to take the sting out of the protests AK performed a volte face. Prior to the establishment of IW the government did ask what the preferred method of payment should be and the general response was usage based. It was only when faced with the reality of paying that the rows erupted.
Water supply and treatment services across the country were at the mercy of individual town and county councils and corporations. Large scale cross-boundary projects were virtually impossible and a political minefield. Even trying to do projects within a fiefdom were at the mercy of whichever (probably FF) councillor could be bought. The quality of service varied enormously across the country and was entirely dependent on the local fiefdom. Water services were invisible to most people (the one positive I can take from the nasty anti-water campaign is it has put water services on the agenda like nothing else, it has made people conscious of water - even if it was in the worst possible way). As for Dublin, it has experienced a considerable growth with no new supplies coming on line, it has been operating pretty close to capacity for years. Extending and supporting Dublin's supply was always going to need cross boundary work. That has finally become possible.
IW has had to take on more people than it needed, however - in case you missed the headline that made me smile - a cull is coming. Having expended an enormous amount of spittle giving out about IW being too large, the same politicos recently started whinging (yes I AM using that word) about potential lay-offs in Irish Water. Those were always necessary, what we do not want is another HSE, overloaded with people who should have rightly been made redundant in the "rationalisation" that the set up of the HSE was supposed to provide. We did need meters. Otherwise usage based charging was not going to be an option. We need to see what it is we are using and start becoming properly aware of our precious water supply and stop taking for granted the process that converts rain into a potable supply piped directly to your house and business.
, it should cost half of what my water services cost!). It failed the EU capitalisation tests because to take the sting out of the protests AK performed a volte face. Prior to the establishment of IW the government did ask what the preferred method of payment should be and the general response was usage based. It was only when faced with the reality of paying that the rows erupted.Water supply and treatment services across the country were at the mercy of individual town and county councils and corporations. Large scale cross-boundary projects were virtually impossible and a political minefield. Even trying to do projects within a fiefdom were at the mercy of whichever (probably FF) councillor could be bought. The quality of service varied enormously across the country and was entirely dependent on the local fiefdom. Water services were invisible to most people (the one positive I can take from the nasty anti-water campaign is it has put water services on the agenda like nothing else, it has made people conscious of water - even if it was in the worst possible way). As for Dublin, it has experienced a considerable growth with no new supplies coming on line, it has been operating pretty close to capacity for years. Extending and supporting Dublin's supply was always going to need cross boundary work. That has finally become possible.
IW has had to take on more people than it needed, however - in case you missed the headline that made me smile - a cull is coming. Having expended an enormous amount of spittle giving out about IW being too large, the same politicos recently started whinging (yes I AM using that word) about potential lay-offs in Irish Water. Those were always necessary, what we do not want is another HSE, overloaded with people who should have rightly been made redundant in the "rationalisation" that the set up of the HSE was supposed to provide. We did need meters. Otherwise usage based charging was not going to be an option. We need to see what it is we are using and start becoming properly aware of our precious water supply and stop taking for granted the process that converts rain into a potable supply piped directly to your house and business.
<sigh> It was never going to be a clean slate. The services were already in existence and people employed across the country running them. There was ALWAYS going to be a staff transfer to deal with and rationalisation to occur.
The optics are really the issue here. A very successful, concerted and nasty campaign has been waged by the same people who tried to get a revolution started on the back of other measures (e.g. local property tax). This one succeeded where the others failed because water charges affected a new cohort of people who generally never have to pay for anything. They had no special investment in property tax, pension levies, USC or the vast majority of the austerity measures that were imposed but they were facing paying water charges.
Your post actually made me sad Purple as it is so true. I'm a high earner with a private pension and I feel monumentally screwed over. It seems that using the high earners in the nations time of need was a one-way release valve. High earners were first hit (which I was okay with at the time) but there seems to be no question of reversing any of the hit as this would be seen now as enriching 'the rich' and 'regressive'.
No party or candidate seems to care about those who contribute most - there aren't enough votes to be worthwhile so we'll just continue being used as an ATM. The Irish Times have a 'match your views to a candidate' Q&A for each constituency and my views weren't considered a match to any of them - the closest I got was a 36% match.
For me, voting will mean starting with the least bad option and working down from there.
ivannomonet
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I think this is the only option open to people with full-time employment.... :-(
Amount of reduction in UK water use due to metered usage = 10%
Amount of loss in water supply in Ireland due to leaking pipes = 40% (which has been going on for decades).
I'm not sure who the "we" is in the above, but the above figures suggest metered residential usage is not essential to proper use of water supply.
Water charges were only introduced to pay back the banks, and they are paid for by the Irish people. Any other purpose was nowhere in the minds of the main players who signed off on it.
Anyhow, this is descending into another Irish Water debate. If I return to the original comment about FG mugging the middle class and never touching the banks, I am in no doubt that this is true. They did mug the middle class (and other classes). They never touched the banks. They were elected on a platform which promised the opposite. The prosecution rests. Guilty as charged.
Exactly what makes you think that metering is only about reduction in usage?
Water charges were not "introduced to pay back the banks". We didn't "pay back" the banks. We yanked them out of a gaping hole that they had fallen into. And water charges alone would be a very, very, very, very, very long time managing to put a filling in that particular cavity. Water charging was included in the agreement concluded with the Troika because it was one of the REALLY obvious gaps they identified. Something that should have been in place a long time ago but was never politically expedient for FF to implement. We had a tax system that was insufficiently broad and was too dependent on property transactions.
I can't agree you have presented any tenable case. if you are the prosecution you are hardly fit to present in any court. Your entire case is based on the fact that you are in no doubt it is true - hardly a convincing argument. "It's true cos I say so"
FF agreed the bailout, FG/Lab largely implemented it. Protection for the vulnerable and the lowest waged was one of the things Labour in particular endeavoured to ensure. The burden of paying the cost of austerity (despite what the loony left would assert) fell largely on your so-called "middle class". That does not mean they were "mugged" - a particularly emotive word frankly. We all form the state, those of us in a position to pay were largely "middle-class". In large part, by September 2010 the banks were close to (or already) insolvent. What that means is that they did not have money. There was ZERO point in attempting to extract money from them. By nationalising them and keeping them running we managed to have a country that didn't descend into widespread anarchy (much to the chagrin of the Anti-Reality Alliance - they'd have loved a nice revolution handed to them on a platter). When they are sold off the state will be in a position to recoup at least some of that. In the meantime, the banks have actually been paying back monies the government provided to back them.
it is silly and ill-informed to assert they never touched the banks. After all, some have been destroyed (Anglo), most others were nationalised (AIB) and even the one that wasn't nationalised had a large lump taken on by the state (BOI). All of the banks were touched. (Some might say many of the bankers had probably been touched in the head for years but that is a different tale). But there was no pot of gold there for any government to draw on. And even if there was - that pot of gold would have still been the middle class who actually use the banking system.
You have not proven anything. Get yourself some facts first.
Water charges were not "introduced to pay back the banks". We didn't "pay back" the banks. We yanked them out of a gaping hole that they had fallen into. And water charges alone would be a very, very, very, very, very long time managing to put a filling in that particular cavity. Water charging was included in the agreement concluded with the Troika because it was one of the REALLY obvious gaps they identified. Something that should have been in place a long time ago but was never politically expedient for FF to implement. We had a tax system that was insufficiently broad and was too dependent on property transactions.
I can't agree you have presented any tenable case. if you are the prosecution you are hardly fit to present in any court. Your entire case is based on the fact that you are in no doubt it is true - hardly a convincing argument. "It's true cos I say so"
FF agreed the bailout, FG/Lab largely implemented it. Protection for the vulnerable and the lowest waged was one of the things Labour in particular endeavoured to ensure. The burden of paying the cost of austerity (despite what the loony left would assert) fell largely on your so-called "middle class". That does not mean they were "mugged" - a particularly emotive word frankly. We all form the state, those of us in a position to pay were largely "middle-class". In large part, by September 2010 the banks were close to (or already) insolvent. What that means is that they did not have money. There was ZERO point in attempting to extract money from them. By nationalising them and keeping them running we managed to have a country that didn't descend into widespread anarchy (much to the chagrin of the Anti-Reality Alliance - they'd have loved a nice revolution handed to them on a platter). When they are sold off the state will be in a position to recoup at least some of that. In the meantime, the banks have actually been paying back monies the government provided to back them.
it is silly and ill-informed to assert they never touched the banks. After all, some have been destroyed (Anglo), most others were nationalised (AIB) and even the one that wasn't nationalised had a large lump taken on by the state (BOI). All of the banks were touched. (Some might say many of the bankers had probably been touched in the head for years but that is a different tale). But there was no pot of gold there for any government to draw on. And even if there was - that pot of gold would have still been the middle class who actually use the banking system.
You have not proven anything. Get yourself some facts first.
Good post and I agree but with the clarification that the people who shouldered the largest burden and were hit most, were high earners. Not the so-called squeezed middle, most of whom are net recipients from the state. That's as it should be but the notion that removing that disproportionate emergency burden would somehow be unjust is nonsense. The state should never take more than half of anyone's income in tax, no matter how much they earn.
How could they start with a clean slate when Unions insisted all water staff in the Co Co's had to be transferred (probably paid 'relocation money' as well even if they didn't physically move work locations) no matter whather they were needed or not. And if I was a Co Co Manager I would have been moving my worst and most troublesome staff into the water section for at least a year before the transfer was due to take place.
Thats how the PS/CS works....Managers can't manage and everything is a compromise with the Unions. The Customer comes a distant second
I do take your point, and yes, absolutely, the more you earned the more you were milked. Whatever about the tax burden, my pension fund is still smarting from the cash grab and probably will always bear the scar - that is probably the bit I like the least. However, I would point out that "middle class" encompasses more than middle earners
I would agree that handing over 50% of your salary should never be endured, I would argue though that as a short term measure it was warranted - operative word though "short".Exactly. And anyway, weren't the banks re-capitalised before water charges were brought in?
Some of the money has been paid back, in fact, BOI are in the clear completely. What I would like to know is where did this money go - was it used to pay down the debt that was borrowed for it or did it end up somewhere else?
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I agree that unions got their oar in BUT this was still a missed opportunity for the government. It seemed like a poison chalice to them, no one wanting it, all hoping it would just go away.
It was given to Bord Gais Éireann to set up but still had to spend 10s of millions on "consultants", then the charges fiasco, what a unit of water would cost. It was mis-managed from the start. As they did u-turn after u-turn in relation to charges it just made those opposed to it more reason to continue protest against it & gain momentum.
We need an "Irish Water" to run the water network in this country - there is no doubting that, but it's been a fiasco from the start - a reflection on the governments failings... and then there's the "Health System Reform"...
There are two classes in Ireland;
- The working class; those who derive their income from their labour or from a pension or other income which they funded with prior earned income (e.g. pensioners). Levels of income vary greatly within this class.
- The dependency class; those who derive their income from the department of Social Welfare (I'm not calling it social protection as it sounds too Orwellian). Levels of income also vary greatly within this class as it includes the majority of the black economy.
How so? The same opportunistic clowns like Ruth Cop-whinger and Paul Murphy would have been out protesting about that. The same morally bankrupt opportunist supreme Brendan Ogle who gives out about Irish Water was happy to have 3000 unnecessary staff in the County Councils. Even if their average pay and cost of employment was only €40'000 per person per year that's still €120'000'000. How many A&E's would that sort out or primary care centers would it build? Hypocrites, utter hypocrites.
Ah yes, the old dig at consultants. Nothing gets the outrage flowing like a good dig at consultants costing millions. Of course Bord Gáis brought in consultants to assist in the set up - Bord Gáis are not in the business of setting up businesses and they were setting up a company to do a task that was not quite in Bord Gáis experience. Consultants are very frequently called in in situations like that to provide short-term manpower and/or expertise in a particular area. The advantage to the company is they don't have to identify and directly employ a team of people with a focus and/or an expertise not required in the long term. It is cheaper in the long run. At least until apoplectic lefties get twisty knickers thinking about it.
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