Irish Water is planning to invest €1.77 billion between now and 2016 to deliver urgently required improvements to water services throughout Ireland.

The utility’s Capital Investment Plan (CIP) for 2014 to 2016 is prioritising investment where it can deliver the most urgently needed improvements in drinking water quality, leakage, water availability, wastewater compliance, efficiencies and customer service.

The water company is proposing to deliver/progress over 380 projects under the Plan which has been submitted to the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) for consideration.

Irish Water estimates that €1.77 billion will be required to deliver on the objectives of the 2014-2016 Capital Investment Plan (CIP). The current indicative funding available to Irish Water is €1.2bn which includes the additional €200m announced by the Government last week. This brings funding up from current levels of €310m in 2014 to €410m in 2015 and 2016.

John Tierney, Managing Director of Irish Water, commented:

 “Our approach to capital investment will ensure that we deliver improvements where they are needed most. The Plan sets out the programme of water and waste water projects that we believe are urgently required to improve the service to our customers. A number of the projects in the Capital Investment Plan have already commenced. However Irish Water is introducing a new approach involving comprehensive asset management. We will look at every opportunity to extend the life of an asset where we can improve performance and at the same time reduce the level of major capital investment – thereby providing better value for the customer and ensuring we can deliver more with limited resources.”

The Irish Water Capital Investment Plan includes:

• Provision of more water and reducing disruption to supply in the Dublin area - investing in the completion of the work to existing treatment plants at Ballymore Eustace and Leixlip to supply an extra 60 million litres of water a day to Dublin – the equivalent of a new treatment plant. Irish Water will also increase the interconnectivity between Ballymore Eustace and Leixlip.
• Improving water quality - a number of schemes which have inadequate water treatment systems are being delivered/progressed in order to ensure they meet water quality standards e.g. Letterkenny in Donegal, Kerry Central and Burncourt/Fethard in Tipperary.
• Tackling leaks - Irish Water is proposing to spend €150 million to accelerate leakage reduction and is moving to a much more proactive approach on leakage, with the long-term objective of reducing public and customer side leakage nationally by 50%.
• Better control and monitoring - Irish Water is planning to invest €7.9m in a modern telemetry system to ensure that adequate control, monitoring and alarm systems are in place to allow for early detection of any issues and to target where key investment is needed.
• Improve existing plants – the firm wants to invest over €100 million in much-needed targeted upgrades to plants around the country to improve performance, environmental compliance, health & safety and energy efficiency. The upgrade of the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant is being progressed as an urgent priority.

The proposed 2014-2016 CIP consists of a targeted programme of over 386 individual projects and a range of sub-programmes, together with an indicative schedule of projects at various stages of planning which are intended for implementation beyond the period of the CIP.

The Plan has been submitted to the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) for consideration under the Interim Price Control Process.

Irish Water took over responsibility for the provision of public water services from 34 local authorities in January 2014. The water company has taken over a large portfolio of assets, including several thousand smaller installations including pump stations, 58,000km of water pipelines and an estimated 35,000km of wastewater pipelines. Due to the currently fragmented nature of the services, the level and quality of asset records varies widely - as a result Irish Water does not have comprehensive and detailed knowledge of the asset base.  The new programme will begin the process of ensuring that information about critical national infrastructure is captured.

The current state of the water and wastewater asset base is highly variable, ranging from very good performance for many of the newer schemes to very poor performance for a large number of schemes, notably the smaller ones.

Leakage from the water networks averages over 41% across the country, twice the level of that in  the UK, where the assets are comparable but have been more intensively managed over the last 20 years. Leakage is also several times the typical figures in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, where networks are much newer from decades of investment in mains renewal.

Irish Water said the comparisons gave a general indication of the relative state of the water infrastructure and that significant investment will be needed over several years for it to catch up with international norms in the water utility sector.