Water shortages across much of the country this summer have highlighted one of the big failures of our political leaders – the inability to implement a system of water charges that will get people to pay attention to the quantity of water they use in their everyday lives.
If the warm, dry summer of 2026 is a harbinger of things to come then acute water shortages will become a feature of life, particularly for people living in the east of the country which is significantly drier than the west.
The current system of unlimited free public water for all households is unsustainable in the long term and is unfair to boot. Monitored consumption through domestic meters, installed but not used for charging consumers, shows that 10 per cent of households account for more than 35 per cent of domestic water consumption.
Some of that imbalance is undoubtedly due to leaks, but it is also due to wasteful consumption by careless consumers or those who are wealthy enough to have every bedroom en suite or a swimming pool filled with free water in the back garden.
Leaving Cert results grade inflation cut again as number of H1s falls
Jon Ossoff might just be the Democrats’ best answer to the US decade of chaos
Gardaí confiscated gun from Michael Healy-Rae after he fired it in TV documentary
‘I couldn’t listen to it’: Brendan O’Connor frankness with Phil Coulter is an unmissable moment
Micheál Martin has deservedly won plaudits for his surefooted handling of the Taoiseach’s office, but 10 years ago he – and his likely successor Jim O’Callaghan – sabotaged the development of a comprehensive system of domestic water charges. The real tragedy is that they did so just when it was beginning to work, after years of protest and disruption stirred up by the far left.
A national water metering system was introduced by then minister for the environment Phil Hogan in 2012 at the behest of the EU/IMF troika, which was supervising the country’s bailout after the financial crash. Water charges and a property tax were deemed essential to ensure the Irish tax base would not be as exposed to another meltdown.
After a shaky start, the property tax became an accepted feature of life once its collection was taken over by the Revenue Commissioners. Hogan also set up Irish Water (now Uisce Éireann) to put the provision of public water on a sound footing. A national system of metered charging for water was part of that plan.
A political campaign, initiated by the Trotskyist left and joined by Sinn Féin, became a real problem for the government. Protests and disruption of the metering work became a feature of political life. Yet by the time of the 2016 general election, about 60 per cent of households were paying the charges and another 20 per cent were exempt. It meant that about 20 per cent of households were still refusing to pay.
The 2016 general election happened just when the plan was on the verge of success. The resulting political stalemate saw Enda Kenny eventually managing to put a Fine Gael-led government in place with the backing of Fianna Fáil.
To the surprise of many, including leading members of his own party, Fianna Fáil negotiator Jim O’Callaghan made the abandonment of water charges a key element of any deal. Fine Gael was deeply reluctant to jettison such an important project just when it was beginning to work, but O’Callaghan was insistent. Eventually Fine Gael conceded that it was a price that would have to be paid if it wanted to stay in office – and that was the end of domestic water charges.
One of the pluses of the ill-fated attempt to introduce charges is that most houses had a domestic water meter installed and all new dwellings had to have a meter. It leaves Uisce Éireann in a good position to monitor domestic consumption.
Water charges are a standard feature in almost all other EU countries. Their existence not only encourages conservation, they provide the revenue to fund the development and maintenance of the water infrastructure. In this country it is all funded through general taxation, which means Uisce Éireann has to plead for money from central government for essential infrastructural development.
The dependence on general taxation is the main reason the water infrastructure was in a dilapidated state for so long. While essential upgrading is now taking place, the combination of dependence on central government and overconsumption due to a lack of charging will continue to inhibit the development of the system required to cope with a drier climate.
The hose pipe bans of this summer are likely to be the harbinger of things to come as our summers get warmer and drier. A dose of water rationing is probably inevitable if charges to regulate consumption are not introduced.
It will take political courage for a future government to finally bite the bullet and face down the extremists who undermined the attempt to bring in a rational system of charging a decade ago. The same political forces destroyed the ability of local authorities to collect bin charges and the end result was the privatisation of bin collection.
Water is a vital public resource that should never be privatised, but if the hard left continues to block the introduction of water charges then that is exactly what could happen in response to a future crisis.
