Water, water, everywhere but at what price?

So the head honcho of the newly constituted Irish Water is claiming that the cost of ‘fixing’ the system he inherited is going to cost us €10 billion.

Assuming that there are four million households involved that amounts to €2.5 million per house.

Even using the smaller US billion, that is still a fairytale figure — it’s no wonder they can come up with fabulous bonuses for staff.

Doing yet another in depth cost/ benefit analysis on the back of an envelope, it can be conclusively proven that the project should be abandoned, if only for the following reasons:

(1) Current trends would indicate that we are not about to run short of water.

(2) Assuming we all sicken ourselves by drinking polluted water, won’t we have Minister Reilly’s grandiose free medical insurance to cure ourselves?

I have now reached the point where I firmly believe that rather than Ireland being the ‘land of Saints and Scholars’, it is instead a Kafkaesque perversion of the legendary land of ‘Liars and Truthtellers’, where the only truth-teller is in involuntary exile on another island, due entirely to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era.

And the rest of that tribe left in Ireland have either taken vows of silence or have been cowed into submission.

You may think me deluded, but remember where you are standing when speaking.

Liam Power

San Pawl Il-Bahar

Malta