Respecting water - Attitudes to water use must change

MINISTER for the Environment John Gormley’s announcement yesterday that the Government is to undertake a multi-billion euro investment programme to upgrade water services is as welcome as it is overdue.

Our present situation, where local authorities lose anything between 16% and 58% of the water treated, at great expense, because of leaking pipes cannot continue. It is economically wasteful and in a world where clean drinking water is an ever scarcer gift it is immoral.

The extraction of vast quantities of water from our rivers is having a profound impact on them and it seems daft to be harming our waterways just to lose so much water through old, leaking pipes.