In 1735, Benjamin Franklin, a young Philadelphia printer decades away from helping found the United States, used his newspaper to warn a fire-prone town about a dangerous habit: carrying live embers from fireplace to fireplace, causing houses to burn. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he wrote, urging locals to use a closed warming pan instead.
When it comes to fresh, drinkable water, Ireland is still mostly buying the pound of cure, using vast amounts of public money to pay for it twice: once at the treatment plant, and again in our failing, polluted rivers.
In Budget 2027, Uisce Éireann was allocated €2.35 billion, an increase of about 40 per cent (€650 million) over two budgets. That is roughly what the Government’s own advisory committee said our Nature Restoration Plan needed annually: €450-€700 million. Nature restoration got no dedicated funding in this budget – not one cent. Yet the EU’s water strategy is clear: nature-based solutions should come first.
It’s not about begrudging investment in pipes and treatment plants. But we’re paying a lot to clean polluted water, while investing little in restoring the rivers, wetlands and farmlands that could keep it pure in the first place. Other countries are doing the exact opposite.
Farmer Jérôme Forgeot grows wheat, barley, alfalfa and lentils on 300 hectares in the Vanne valley, southeast of the city. Every year he gets a payment from the city’s public water utility, Eau de Paris, not to buy his crops but to pay for what no longer seeps from his fields into the water.
A quarter of Paris’s water comes from springs in this part of France, and for decades nitrates and pesticides from surrounding farms leached into it. Rather than spend money on treatment, the utility decided in 2020 to design its own scheme and pay farmers to stop the pollution at the source.
It’s a clever, simple initiative, exactly the kind that brings farmers in and lets them get on with their work. Farmers sign six-seven year contracts and are paid €150-€450 a hectare to cut pesticides, reduce nitrate leaching or farm organically, with part of the payment tied to nitrate levels measured in their fields.
Eau de Paris agronomists advise farmers one to one and also help them with their businesses, finding buyers for their produce. Forgeot went organic in 2012 and helped found a farmers’ group, Terres du Pays d’Othe, that sells lentils, oil and pasta to Parisian school canteens. In 2020 he signed a contract until 2027. The city’s children eat healthy, local food grown to protect the city’s water; farmers are paid to change their approach and, in return, expand their markets.
Most importantly, it works. About 125 farmers, covering 20,000 hectares, are now under contract. Pesticide use on their land fell by 77 per cent in 2023. In the Vanne catchment, organic farmland rose from 1 per cent in 2010 to 28 per cent in 2025, and peak pesticide levels in the water halved.
It’s a responsible use of public money. Treating polluted water costs three times as much as preventing the pollution. When chlorothalonil residues turned up in French drinking water, the pesticide treatment bill tripled.
Last December, Brussels extended Ireland’s nitrates derogation to 2028, which allows 7,000 farms to exceed EU limits on manure nitrogen. We’re the only member state with a derogation, and keeping it depends on measurable improvements in water quality. That’s still not happening. The EPA’s latest report shows that nitrogen in our major rivers is increasing, and agriculture is the main source, mainly fertiliser and manure.
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Uisce Éireann isn’t blind to this. It has planted 121,000 native trees on its own sites and admits that tackling pollution at the source beats treating it. In 2022, it gave 35 farmers in Cavan’s Erne-Larah catchment free advice, pesticide stores and fencing.
But with such a sizeable budget, Uisce Éireann needs to see itself as more than a builder of pipes and treatment plants. Its catchments supply water to half the country, and the cheapest, most effective approach is to invest in resilient waterways. The question is whether Uisce Éireann, and the regulator that sets its spending, will urgently realise that paying for clean water at source is now a fundamental part of its job.
Uisce Éireann does not publish what it spends removing pesticides, but Northern Ireland offers a guide. NI Water told farmers that carbon filters to strip pesticides out cost £5 million (€5.91 million), plus up to £50,000 (€59,145) a year to run at one plant. When it paid for weed-wiping in one Armagh catchment, pesticides fell by three-quarters within two years, and the savings at the treatment works outweighed the cost.
Uisce Éireann’s annual report shows how it sees its job. Its sustainability section says it aims to protect the environment “on which our services depend”. It sets six ambitions, but restoring the catchments isn’t among them. Paris can say prevention is cheaper because it counts the cost of the cure. Uisce Éireann could start by publishing the same comparison.
Irish farming is mostly grass and livestock, and contradictory farm policies, a weak organic market and poor procurement practices make it hard to change. In the budget 2027, the Government gave €31 million for a new fertiliser scheme, which might benefit the fertiliser industry but will keep farmers hooked on polluting activities. Irish households pay no water charges, so a restoration scheme would fall on the taxpayer, though not necessarily alone: the European Investment Bank and the European Commission are keen to help member states with lending and technical assistance for nature-based solutions in water resilience programmes. The EIB has already lent to Eau de Paris for their work.
Forgeot’s lentils are on Parisian school menus. He’s making money from not polluting. The question for us is: who will pay farmers to keep our water clean, and how much longer can we afford not to?
