Irish Water deal ‘cloaked in secrecy’

A deal agreed to guarantee local authority staff work with Irish Water until the middle of the next decade was “cloaked in secrecy” and is a noose around the company’s neck, Renua leader Lucinda Creighton has claimed.

Elsewhere, a minister admitted yesterday that one of the biggest problems in the setting-up of Irish Water had been taking on an eight-year project and trying to get it done in a shorter time.

After a dismal week for Irish Water where it was declared essentially to be controlled by the Government and failed a crucial EU test as a stand-alone private company, questions were asked yesterday about deals done for its staff.

An initial service level agreement (SLA) to keep thousands of local council workers, including engineers, in the company, was extended from five to 12 years.

Questions remain about how the deal was done between Irish Water and local councils in 2012 and 2013 when the company was under pressure to set out its spending criteria.

Ms Creighton claims the deal to guarantee jobs has led to hugely increased costs for Irish Water and is shrouded in secrecy: “I think that the service level agreements from the very beginning have proven to be a noose around the neck of Irish Water.”

She said the SLAs had ensured that promises of a streamlined, slick utility that would reduce bureaucracy and save money had “not materialised”.

The Opposition TD blamed former environment minister Phil Hogan for setting up a consultative group in late 2012 on service level agreements. She said the consultative group was set up to appease trade unions and county and city managers and was designed to “silence” those unions, to “ensure that whatever obstacles may be put in the way may be removed”.

She said the 12-year agreements with workers were never envisaged at the outset of the project, and pointed to estimates by the ESRI which suggest the staffing costs will now be €1.5bn more because of the agreements — a claim vigorously disputed by Irish Water.

Ms Creighton said reducing staffing levels was going to take a very long time and that this should have been done at the very beginning.

“Unfortunately Irish Water ought to have been set up with a competitive process in place for staffing arrangements, exactly what ought to have occurred when the HSE was established.

“Instead, it just subsumed all of the staffing levels of all of the local authorities.”

Ms Creighton said meetings that took place on staffing arrangements with Irish Water’s consultative group were “secret” as no minutes were available for them.

She said information about those staffing discussions at the meetings was only obtained by media freedom of information requests, or TDs using parliamentary questions and the process was “cloaked in secrecy”.

“It is completely out of control. Irish Water is an enormous quango which is not fit for purposeThe sensible thing for the Government to do would be to accept that they got this wrong, to accept that this is not a sustainable model.”

Meanwhile, junior justice minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said that one of the biggest mistakes in setting up Irish Water was to try and get a project which takes eight years done in two.

He also claimed that many people have a “psychological” issue surrounding receiving a new bill through their doors.