We are now paying for abandoning the much-hated water charges

The system cannot currently cater to households with a connection, it will require investment on a scale unseen if the 50,000 new housing units required each year to tackle the housing crisis are to be delivered.

The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) has already signalled alarm that a lack of investment in infrastructure is slowing down the delivery and completion of housing.

“When you go and try and get your connection agreement to a utility — whether that’s electricity or water — there are very significant delays, because we simply haven’t been putting the pipes in the ground for a long time now,” said CFI director of housing and planning Conor O’Connell.

Having a connection does not translate to being provided with an adequate service.

This week, Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn lifted a glass of brownish-green liquid in dramatic fashion in the Dáil, pointing out that this is the water that is coming through the taps of those living on the northside of Cork.

“People are waking up on the northside of the city not knowing whether they can bathe their children, wash their hands, have a shower or put on a wash and leave.

“Irish Water has come out with a statement that €500m needs to be secured for Cork City Council. Working on the basis that the €500m is provided, it would take 90 years, at the rate the work is being done, to replace the Victorian pipeline in Cork City,” he said.

The Taoiseach made it clear that he is aware of the issue, with Fianna Fáil’s Pádraig O’Sullivan and Sinn Féin’s Thomas Gould also raising it for quite some time.

Micheál Martin stressed that there are about 600 km of water mains pipes in the city, 50% to 60% of which are made from cast iron and were first installed 100 years ago.

Uisce Éireann is responsible for Ireland’s water and wastewater infrastructure, which includes more than 1,700 water and wastewater treatment plants, over 4,000 pumping stations, and 90,000km of pipes.

Water charges, which were a stipulation set down as part of the bailout, aimed to provide a stable funding base outside of state revenues, which the troika cited as being an overly replied upon form of finance. At a time when the country was struggling to fund day-to-day expenses, the charges guaranteed that water would continue to run through the taps.

When the economy reignited, any government of the day could then begin to supplement the water charges income stream with exchequer funding to improve services and in many instances upgrade systems not touched since the 1920s.

“There was a coherent argument for it, both in terms of avoiding waste and having a flow of income into the new State entity, which was Irish Water, the same as electricity is paid for and allows the ESB to develop modern infrastructure,” former Labour leader Brendan Howlin said.

“We had no money; we needed to invest. If we were to have any industry in the country, any housing in the country we had to have both freshwater infrastructure and wastewater infrastructure. 

"We were facing also legal action from the European Commission about our water discharges, so it was imperative to have some sort of income at a time when we had no income.”

But the public groundswell of opposition ensured that water charges became a shameful idea, never to be uttered again.

Storm Éowyn further exposed just how ramshackle the system really is when tens of thousands of customers realised their treatment plants did not have the backup generators to maintain services.

Uisce Éireann is now buying 100 new generators in response to the widespread water outages and a further 200 will be purchased later.

This year, over €1.7bn is public money is being provided to Uisce Éireann to meet the cost of domestic water services. 

The Government claims that this will ensure the continued operation, repair, and upgrading of the country’s water and wastewater infrastructure.

“The continued investment in public water services capital infrastructure is vital to support housing delivery, economic recovery, and for delivering environmental compliance,” the budget document states.

Uisce Éireann has estimated that up to €60bn will be needed to fix known problems with Ireland’s water and wastewater systems over the next 25 years, with €17bn of that required in the next four years.

In its strategic funding plan 2025-2029, published last December, the public water utility set out the need for an “ambitious” capital investment plan.

“The repair and upgrading of the country’s water and wastewater treatment plants, and water and sewer networks will require a multi-billion euro investment programme that will extend beyond the lifetime of this plan,” the report said.

Some of this funding may be found from the Apple tax windfall.

Reintroducing water charges, however, is not an option even if it makes sense.

As Howlin put it: “There is no political reason to go into the lion’s den in an area where clearly there is, for whatever reason historic or otherwise, a notion that water should be free. That’s now an established principle.

“There is no politician who is going to touch that again for the foreseeable future.”