Water Charges. How much?

[Maguire01]

AZ, you are describing the water services as they are as if they were some kind of cohesive system.

It's not, the problem with the water services is that it's maintenance was funded through county rates, the county council had no incentive to maintain the system because it cost them money. Instead they let the system fall into ruin at which point the dept of environment would fund a refurb.
So we were never taxed centrally for this, environment had an ad hoc funding mechanism for it, surely you can see this is highly ineffective and that a central body with a ring fenced funding and a good background in network development will be infinitely more efficient.

It's the exact same arrangement as the gas and elec network, people and industry pay a pro-rata charge for usage based on their throughput. People don't complain about it because that's the way it's always been.

As someone said, there's lots to be complaining about, this isn't one of them

You're missing the point. We paid money for public services including Water. This is what our taxes are for. The fact that this money was wasted, or spent inefficiently is my issue with it.

Now we are getting a body specifically set up to handle this, that's good. Unfortunately we are having to pay ADDITIONAL monies for this body to operate, rather than being able to simply allocate the requisite funds from the public coffers, as we would be able to do if there was any proper accounting going on.

It's an absolute disgrace that the government cannot say, 'we have allocated €600 million from the central coffers for the provision of water, and this will be run under the auspices of Irish Water'. Instead they are saying 'We're keeping the money ye thought ye were paying for public services, but we've squandered because we haven't a clue how we spent it, and now ye have to pay extra for this service'.

Surely the point is you didn't pay enough to cover the cost of providing a proper service and maintaining the infrastructure? Or, more accurately, you didn't pay enough to over the cost of providing a proper service, maintaining the infrastructure AND providing all the other public services.

Now you could pay for water from the level of general taxation that is currently paid. But to do it properly, address historic capital underinvestment, address poor water quality in parts of the country, address increasingly stringent environmental standards, and secure water supply for certain areas (such as Dublin) for the future, you need to direct a lot more money to water than has historically been the case.

What other public services therefore, do you take money from in order to fund this? (Please don't mention TD pensions, as someone else has - a mere distraction and a drop in the ocean.)

[lynchbhoy]

Not sure where your info is coming from by The water company people I know believe there was prob enough money already collected to address what you say and fix existing issues - but true to form, the inefficiencies in the service /civil service etc wasted the money

The water charges have been set up to enable another stream of revenue/taxation
I'm not against it but I despise the inefficient running and mishandling of yet another service in this country

[FL/MAYO]

Lads I lived over there. You get a lot more disposable income left in your salary after taxes than you do in Ireland. Don't be patronising, some of us have lived over there, and paid taxes over there for several years. I'd take the US tax system in a heartbeat.

AZ, when you add up all the taxes and surcharges etc what percentage approximately are you paying out to the government?

I just went through my own pay stub, and it worked out at 42% in deductions when you count in federal tax, medicare, social security etc. that's not counting property taxes. Luckily there is no state or local tax in Fl. People in  states such as New York must be paying close to 55% in taxes when you add in their property, state and local taxes. I wont even mention the cost of third level education over here compared to Ireland. The U.S tax system isn't that great either.

[Maguire01]

Not sure where your info is coming from by The water company people I know believe there was prob enough money already collected to address what you say and fix existing issues - but true to form, the inefficiencies in the service /civil service etc wasted the money

The water charges have been set up to enable another stream of revenue/taxation
I'm not against it but I despise the inefficient running and mishandling of yet another service in this country

Well at least now it will be transparent. We'll know how much is being spent on water and what we'll be getting for it. We won't have to rely on what your mates believe was "probably" the case.

[foxcommander]

What other public services therefore, do you take money from in order to fund this? (Please don't mention TD pensions, as someone else has - a mere distraction and a drop in the ocean.)

If you look at running public services a little more efficiently and stop unnecessary spending then you would claw back a lot.
Look at the projects such as e-voting machines - could do with that 60 million now. At the time it was just seen as "plenty more where that came from"

Pensions are only one smaller cut that is needed. Why does Alan Dukes or Bertie deserve guaranteed incomes of that size. Didn't they get a huge salary while in office?
Dukes pulls in 130k a year from his pension. Insignificant?? How many water bills are needed cover this cost?
How many are getting these nice sums every year?

it's a new tax. don't try call it a service charge.

[cadhlancian]

My last water bill was $487 ( bi monthly) in San Diego 

[magpie seanie]

But the point is that there was no cohesive plan or spend on water prior to this, it's new!

As for Magpies point, I would say that every kind of shite has been thrown into Irish water, from what I know you have a good crew from Bord Gais that are used to managing large scale development projects and then you have every useless operational f**ker with long service and huge pension gone in from Bord Gais and the local authorities. It will take a lot to sort that out, apparently very frustrating for the good people that are in there.

Magpie, much as you'd like to use appointments to beat FG, I honestly believe that there were no political appointments in IW but rather an off loading but local authorities, if ur man is as useless as you say then you have your answer, someone bright in Sligo Co Co saw an opportunity to get rid

I'm an equal opportunities beater when it comes to croneyism. On this occasion it is FG but FF and Lab have proven consistently down the year to be equally adept at it, especially the former. If you think there are no political appointments in Irish Water I'd strenuosly but respectfully disagree. I have no proof of course but if it looks like a duck....

A quick bit of research on our former county manager will show I'm not exaggerating. It's a pity he wasn't got rid of sooner.

Heard on the news this morning that there are serious issues with the complaints process with Irish Water, Joan Burton on about it. I'm obviously not alone. It's going to be a shambles.

If they spent the money on fixing the infrastructure there would be very little cost involved in providing water. That's not wishful thinking by me, I've seen several academics on TV say this.

[AZOffaly]

AZ, you are describing the water services as they are as if they were some kind of cohesive system.

It's not, the problem with the water services is that it's maintenance was funded through county rates, the county council had no incentive to maintain the system because it cost them money. Instead they let the system fall into ruin at which point the dept of environment would fund a refurb.
So we were never taxed centrally for this, environment had an ad hoc funding mechanism for it, surely you can see this is highly ineffective and that a central body with a ring fenced funding and a good background in network development will be infinitely more efficient.

It's the exact same arrangement as the gas and elec network, people and industry pay a pro-rata charge for usage based on their throughput. People don't complain about it because that's the way it's always been.

As someone said, there's lots to be complaining about, this isn't one of them

You're missing the point. We paid money for public services including Water. This is what our taxes are for. The fact that this money was wasted, or spent inefficiently is my issue with it.

Now we are getting a body specifically set up to handle this, that's good. Unfortunately we are having to pay ADDITIONAL monies for this body to operate, rather than being able to simply allocate the requisite funds from the public coffers, as we would be able to do if there was any proper accounting going on.

It's an absolute disgrace that the government cannot say, 'we have allocated €600 million from the central coffers for the provision of water, and this will be run under the auspices of Irish Water'. Instead they are saying 'We're keeping the money ye thought ye were paying for public services, but we've squandered because we haven't a clue how we spent it, and now ye have to pay extra for this service'.

Surely the point is you didn't pay enough to cover the cost of providing a proper service and maintaining the infrastructure? Or, more accurately, you didn't pay enough to over the cost of providing a proper service, maintaining the infrastructure AND providing all the other public services.

Now you could pay for water from the level of general taxation that is currently paid. But to do it properly, address historic capital underinvestment, address poor water quality in parts of the country, address increasingly stringent environmental standards, and secure water supply for certain areas (such as Dublin) for the future, you need to direct a lot more money to water than has historically been the case.

What other public services therefore, do you take money from in order to fund this? (Please don't mention TD pensions, as someone else has - a mere distraction and a drop in the ocean.)

I disagree. I think we do pay enough to provide these services, but because of inefficiency and wastage, it's not covering the 'costs'. Hence my disgust that nobody seems to be able to tell the country where exactly the money is being spent. How much would a proper water service cost? How much is currently allocated from the public coffers. How is this spent? Where is the leak (of money)? It's not just water. We're now paying separate taxes for Roads, TV, Social Welfare, 'Property' and Water. What services are provided by the PAYE, VAT and USC monies? How is this spent? where are the accounts?

[armaghniac]

I disagree. I think we do pay enough to provide these services, but because of inefficiency and wastage, it's not covering the 'costs'.

On what is this belief based? For instance in water countries with higher taxes generally, like Sweden, also charge more for water.

Hence my disgust that nobody seems to be able to tell the country where exactly the money is being spent. How much would a proper water service cost? How much is currently allocated from the public coffers. How is this spent? Where is the leak (of money)? It's not just water. We're now paying separate taxes for Roads, TV, Social Welfare, 'Property' and Water. What services are provided by the PAYE, VAT and USC monies? How is this spent? where are the accounts?

There are high level accounts, badly presented ones that are difficult to comprehend for the most part. But of course the devil is in the detail. One of the sad things about this crisis is there have been no real data improvements to determine whether the money is being spent efficiently. This suits everyone, the government can more easily pull political stunts, the opposition and the media can continue to rant in general terms about waste according to whatever agenda they have at that time without ever having to prove anything or differentiate between the things that are waste and those that are not.  In footballing terms, if you want to improve a team it is no use saying that they are "no good", you need to see is their defence good, their midfield, their forwards, their fitness etc.   

[AZOffaly]

Exactly. But that's not what we are getting. What we are getting is it is 'no good' so we're doing it differently.

I'd like to see WHY it's 'no good'. Were the existing departments just wasting money, or were they being starved of money because there wasn't enough in the pot.

If it's the former, then we shouldn't have an extra charge, we should just give the money to Irish Water and tell them to use it properly.
If it's the latter, then maybe we didn't need a new board, but we did need extra funds. Those funds are either from the existing central coffers or a new tax.

The problem is that we are being asked to take it as read that we haven't been contributing enough, and therefore we need to contribute more. Where is the proof, in accounting terms?

Again, I have no problem paying fairly for services, and have no problem with a properly metered solution. However until someone can prove to me the need for supplementary funds, or actually a brand new income stream, while maintaining existing levels of general taxation then I consider this a symptom of inefficiency and wastage.

Surely any project manager worth his or her salt would be able to say

It will cost €x euro for us to upgrade the network.
It will cost €y euro for us to maintain the network and water quality per annum.

Therefore we need a budget of €x + €y million now, and €y million per annum after the initial capital investment.
We currently allocate €z to water services from the central exchequer per annum.

Therefore we have a shortfall of €a million for the upgrade, and €b million per annum.

We forecast additional water charges will bring in €c per annum.

That's hardly too much to expect is it?

[lynchbhoy]

Not sure where your info is coming from by The water company people I know believe there was prob enough money already collected to address what you say and fix existing issues - but true to form, the inefficiencies in the service /civil service etc wasted the money

The water charges have been set up to enable another stream of revenue/taxation
I'm not against it but I despise the inefficient running and mishandling of yet another service in this country

Well at least now it will be transparent. We'll know how much is being spent on water and what we'll be getting for it. We won't have to rely on what your mates believe was "probably" the case.

how will you prove efficiency?

[Billys Boots]

I agree, but the problem is that the numbers you're asking for are not available - and the people who can shed light on the situation are not doing so, and won't. 

It's a mess that is indicative of the problem with our public services - no accountability, no ownership, no responsibility.  And the typical response of our electorate - shoot the messenger and votes for the gobshites, again and again. 

[Rossfan]

our public services - no accountability, no ownership, no responsibility.  And the typical response of our electorate - shoot the messenger and votes for the gobshites, again and again.

Who is the messenger that was "shot" and who are the gobshites that we vote for again and again?

[lynchbhoy]

I agree, but the problem is that the numbers you're asking for are not available - and the people who can shed light on the situation are not doing so, and won't. 

It's a mess that is indicative of the problem with our public services - no accountability, no ownership, no responsibility.  And the typical response of our electorate - shoot the messenger and votes for the gobshites, again and again.

Completely agree with all of that
But
What choices do we have in elections!!!

Independents will be bribed to join up with status quo
That leaves only sf - but they won't get enough votes from the traditional ff/fg people to win them anything

We seriously need a new party or revolution
Or a dictator
Heil micheal o'leary

[Rossfan]

We seriously need a new party or revolution
Or a dictator
Heil micheal o'leary

Be careful what you wish for 
That was the cry in Germany c 1932