Ownership vote mooted for 2020 - It’s time to face reality on water

India’s sixth-largest city, Chennai is in crisis as its water reservoirs and rivers have run dry.

Failing water resources will by next year affect 100m Indians. India’sclimate and gross poverty in such a rich country may turn this failure into a crisis. Half a world away, 8,795km, the same issues are in play in Galway though not critically yet.

Four beaches were closed recently after water quality tests.

They were later reopened. Irish Water has rejected the suggestion that work on city sewers might have contributed to the closures.

How happy those who enjoy the waters of Galway Bay, conservationists too, must be that plans for Europe’s biggest salmon farm — a fish feedlot that estimates suggested would produce as much waste as Galway City — seem to have run into the sand as its impact might have been as disastrous as any malfunctioning city sewer system.

The issue of how we develop, secure and fund a reliable water supply has not however, run into the sand. Reports that a vote on whether the public ownership of our water resources should be copper fastened might be held by next year will re-energise a divisive issue.

When last in the public square the issue, appallingly mishandled by government, was, partially at least, a proxy for other issues.

We cannot afford to do that again, we cannot waste another decade before we face the realities around supplying a growing population and economy with ever-more precious water.