Letter sent to Irish Times Price of Water In the current debate on Irish Water there appears to be a sense of collective amnesia among Government politicians and many journalists in Ireland when reporting on the price of water. Every day we hear leading politicians and journalists say that we dont pay for water in Ireland. Yet they conveniently forgot that taxpayers in Ireland have been paying for water infrastructure for decades through imposition of the highest rates of road tax in the EU. Since this added tax burden was specifically established to fund water infrastructure where has this money been spent? On Sunday night last on RTE The Week in Politics, Mr. Paul Cunningham, RTEs European Correspondent attempted to compare the price of water in Ireland to Denmark. The cost of water provision in Ireland with Denmark is incomparable. In Denmark 100% of drinking water is sourced from groundwater, which requires the installation and maintenance of over 6000 groundwater wells. Every year in Denmark new drinking water sources have to be found and existing wells decommissioned due to contamination of groundwater from pesticides, naturally occurring arsenic and saline water intrusion. In comparison in Ireland drinking water is almost exclusively sourced from rivers and lakes, at a cost significantly less than what is required in Denmark or any other European country. If RTE were transparent in their reporting on this issue they should also compare the cost of road tax between the two countries. In Denmark it costs just €69 per year for a petrol car. This is ten times less than what we pay in Ireland. With over 2 million private vehicles on the road in Ireland the extra revenue generated from this tax is over 1 billion euro per annum. This is same amount of money that we are also told it costs to fund water infrastructure. Declan Waugh Member Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 10:49:29 +0000
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