Well it never rains but it pours for Irish Water. Ireland is blessed with having more water than anywhere else in Europe but by the time Irish Water gets their hands on it they proceed to lose over half of it. The Independent reports that it loses 680 million litres per day has our good friends Irish Water tries to send it to us through their antiquated systems.
They say that Cork City is the blackspot in the country losing some 54.6% of its water whilst Roscommon is close behind in losing 53% of its supply but that really does not matter because it is only “piss” they are sending us anyway. I’m alarmed at the thought of this fat Roscommon cow standing in a field and ejecting millions of litres of “piss” a day. No wonder the poor old farmers cannot keep their fields dry with God sending us down millions of litres of good clean drinking water and then the Roscommon cow or Irish Water by magic turning it into “piss”. I use the word advisably because my old TD, Ming Flanagan said I could.
As we in the country suffer from “Boil Water” notices, the darlings of South Dublin only lose 16.32% of their water which they can drink from the tap at anytime. Would you say that this is a sign of the Dail’s indifference to “Culchie” affairs or is it that it is just the luck of the draw.
I said in my last posting that Irish Water are planning to invest €204 million in repairing this problem over the next three years but they have admitted it will take them 20 years to reduce the leakage from its present 50%+ to a more acceptable 20%. Over these three years to 2018 they expect to save 5-6% for this cost of €204 million. No wonder their accountancy model is up the wall.
But much worse news is breaking after these last two days of freezing temperatures, these new fangled water meters are popping like champagne corks at a society wedding sending showers of water gushing down roads into gullies and then into the drainage system. I wonder who is paying for that sewage disposal?
It all goes to show how useless successive Irish Governments have been when they decide to go for this enormous investment which they expect the people of Ireland to pay for at a time when the poor buggers around the country have not got a pot to piss in. Why didn’t the government decide to embark on this investment 10 or 15 years ago when they were awash with billions of euros but they never gave a thought to the infrastructure of water supply preferring to drink wine with banksters and their ilk. So why as it got so important now, now in its darkest financial hour?
My mother always told me to never bite off more than you can chew and it seems to me that is what the present government are doing. Instead of a steady programme of renewal over many years introducing a fixed charge per household. Only buy what you can afford being the mantra but it became more a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The funny thing is, is that we have all this pure natural wholesome water falling on us, (literally a gift from the heavens), and we pay corrupt arseholes good money to pump piss through our taps… Not one person has ever thought of collecting rainwater and using it… Ha ha ha
Paul,
I like the mention of 1918 (possibly 2018?), I fear that the Irish Water system is currently best described as being marooned in that sort of era. At least your water is owned by your country, most of the UK water companies are now foreign-owned and we have no grid system.
Thus when it becomes dry in one area, it’s not as straightforward as opening a connecting valve to divert water. Only recently, during a dry spell, Northumbria Water were able to flog some of their plentiful supplies (Kielder Dam was probably the best investment that area’s water company ever made) to neighbouring Yorkshire Water at a not inconsiderable profit. Capitalism at is best, eh?
So, as you can see, UK’s system is far from perfect. I’d suspect a Referendum on the Renationalisation of Water in the UK would achieve a 75% level of support, similar that asked in a poll regarding the return of UK railways to State Control.
It seems that the one big difference between the UK and Ireland is that currently all the UK water companies are making substantial profits. No doubt the authorities in Ireland will be hoping to do likewise….