Irish Examiner View: Who carries the can for life’s main need?

While our approach to water management has its imperfections, they are as nothing compared to the scandals faced by our neighbours in the UK.

There is widespread acceptance that provision of water is an essential service that needs to stay in public ownership. File Picture.

A sometimes under-appreciated benefit of having a big neighbour is that its actions can be used as the perfect reverse barometer. Certainly, we have gained as a nation in the past few years by observing what the British government is up to, and then doing exactly the opposite.

But where there are problems in common, it can be instructive to learn from the mistakes of others. And this is nowhere better illustrated than in the varying attitudes towards the management of water, that essential component of life, between our countries. 

True, the Republic has had its share of difficulties with supply and maintenance. The number of monitored water bodies in satisfactory condition has declined, with estuaries and coastal waters returning the poorest results. Only 51% of Ireland’s sewage is being treated to the standards set by the European Union to protect the environment, while the EU average is 90%.

Towns and cities including Clonakilty, Lahinch, and Malahide are not treating sewage to EU parameters. Works to eliminate raw sewage flowing into seas and rivers from 32 towns and villages have commenced, or are due to start by 2024.

Though there are still unacceptable contamination incidents, with some communities forced back on bottled water while infrastructure is replaced, overall water quality has improved. 

We remember the acrimony over failed attempts to introduce charges, but there is widespread acceptance that provision of water is an essential service that needs to stay in public ownership, which it does under Uisce Éireann, answering to environmental and economic regulators.

While our approach has imperfections, they are as nothing compared to the scandals faced by our neighbours, where years of underinvestment by rapacious privatised companies has resulted in what can best be described as a “shitstorm”.

Water companies released sewage into Britain’s rivers and beaches more than 800 times a day last year. Sewage was spilled on blue flag beaches 1,500 times in 2022. These water companies have paid out over €70bn in dividends in the 30 or so years since privatisation in 1989, while running up €60bn of debts.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that handing over a monopoly to private interests whose first responsibility is to their shareholders is not the best way of serving the citizenry. Lest the limp list of sanctions to encourage satisfactory performance proves too daunting for bold venture capitalists, there is a 25-year statutory notice period before a water company can have its operating licence removed.

Happily for the British, there is an Irish campaigner leading the increasingly loud public clamour and protest. Step forward Feargal Sharkey of Derry, once lead singer of The Undertones, now eco-frontman for a diverse movement pressing for political and legal change. 

He told The Observer at the weekend that, where people used to stop him in the street to talk about the classic song ‘Teenage Kicks’, these days “it’s always about shite in rivers”.

Climate change and rising temperatures necessitate an increased importance for husbanding water and what is happening across the Irish Sea should grab our attention.

The poet WH Auden said that “thousands have lived without love, not one without water”. 

That was in 1957. It’s a message that will resonate ever more loudly into the future.