CEO insists Uisce Éireann is 'value for money' after State body paid €13.m in bonuses last year

'I would say that we definitely deliver good services around the country,' chief executive Niall Gleeson told the Public Accounts Committee

Uisce Éireann CEO Niall Gleeson said today: 'We have challenges but I do think that it is money that is well spent.' File picture: Naoise Culhane

Water utility Uisce Éireann has defended its bonus scheme and money received from the State, insisting that such investment represents “value for money”.

The utility, first set up in 2013 as Irish Water to handle domestic water charges, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that it received close to €1.7bn from the State in 2024 between capital and subvention, or grant, payments.

The latter payment of €1.1bn is an annualised contribution first introduced to offset losses when water charges were formally scrapped in 2017, following a protracted backlash from the public.

Uisce Éireann also has access to an additional €1bn loan facility from the finance minister, which was almost completely drawn down at the end of 2024, the PAC heard.

“I would say that we definitely deliver good services around the country,” chief executive Niall Gleeson told the PAC, when asked if he thought that State investment represents value for money for the taxpayer.

“We have challenges but I do think that it is money that is well spent, yes,” Mr Gleeson said.

Uisce Éireann bonuses

The utility’s chief financial officer defended the utility’s bonus system, which saw €13.1m paid out in ‘performance-related awards’ in 2024, an unusual arrangement for a State body and itself an increase of €2.5m or 24% in just one year.

Chris McCarthy said Uisce Éireann is “a high-performing utility” and that such a bonus structure is not unusual among such agencies like itself, the ESB, or Gas Networks Ireland.

Mr Gleeson had previously defended bonus payments at the agency as necessary in order to recruit and retain staff. Average bonuses at Uisce Éireann were just under €6,500 in 2023, with the highest figures, paid as a percentage of salary, topping out at €30,000.

Some 27% of Uisce Eireann’s 1,540 staff were paid more than €100,000 in 2024, though Mr Gleeson stressed that the average rate of pay at the utility was closer to €79,000.

Asked why, more than 10 years after the utility was established, water workers within the local authorities have yet to move officially across to work for Uisce Éireann, Mr Gleeson said there is a reluctance among older staff, who are close to retirement, to move their pension to the utility’s scheme.

He added that local authority workers do not have access to the pay increments scale they would be on while working directly for the councils, should they move officially to the utility.

Water network

The meeting heard that Ireland’s water pipe network, which is notoriously antiquated and leak-ridden, is some 65,000 kilometres in length — effectively double that of Germany when adjusted per head of population.

Infrastructure chief at Uisce Éireann, Sean Laffey, told the committee that, given the length of the network, it is impossible to say whether or not people are illegally ‘tapping into’ water resources without the State’s knowledge.

In terms of connections for new properties, Uisce Eireann approved contracts for 52,000 units in 2024, the PAC was told, with 32,000 approvals handed down up to the end of September 2025, suggesting that actual approvals for this year will be just under 43,000, a drop of close to 17%.