With water charges a thing of the past, Caroline O’Doherty asks how we will finance Irish Water and essential infrastructural works.

Irish Water has identified projects that require capital expenditure of €5.5bn up to the end of 2021 and some €13bn over the next 20 years. Here’s just a sample of some of the bigger plans and budgets involved.

Just about everyone in the water charges debate agrees that water services need fast, generous and sustained investment but the consensus crumbles quickly on the question of how to fund them.

Irish Water is not the only water utility operating in a setting made complex by conflicting political and financial needs.

After almost a year of argument, inside the Dail and out, over the merits of a referendum on the public ownership of water, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar shut down the debate in the way only he can.