Dismantle money wasting Irish Water

As a former town councillor — I find it hard to stomach what this government has done in setting up Irish Water. The millions that have been spent to date on the establishment of IW could, and should have, been better spent.

The local authorities already had the best educated engineers on their payroll. These engineers knew the local infrastructure. They long budgeted for works that needed to be done on a yearly basis. They kept within the money allocated by Government otherwise, if there was an over-run, that money had to be found elsewhere which meant another project would suffer.

The following needs to be done:

The water services and structures need to be given back to the local authorities.

The moratorium on staffing should be lifted so the local authorities can carry out necessary works within a reasonable time frame — thus giving employment to people, even graduates coming out of colleges and universities and entering the departure lounges of our airports.

It was said that in the years of the Celtic Tiger, the government never invested money in the right places like hospitals, water infrastructure. They never said a truer word.

Deirdre Culligan

Kilrush

Co Clare