Letter sent to newspaper yesterday. Wonder will they print it? Irish Water, Another Failed State Owned Enterprise? In 1961, the Irish Government established Nitrigin Eireann Teoranta (NET), a state owned enterprise that what was to become one of the most costly and ineffective state owned enterprises in our history. Ultimately, the decision to establish NET led to a series of disastrous political and economic decisions that continued for decades as the State continued to misallocate taxpayers funds to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds (equivalent to over a billion euro’s in today’s money) in an attempt to recoup and justify their initial investment in this failed enterprise. The History of Irish Fertilizer, by Mark Cooper and John Davies outlines how the monopolistic behaviour of this state owned monopoly removed the downward pressure on costs and presented opportunities for cost enhancement which would have resulted in liquidation, if it were a private enterprise. Based on the recent experiences at Irish Water another state owned monopoly, it seems that not much has changed in the preceding years. Let us hope that it won’t take four decades of misallocation of taxpayers funds before our Government finally realise that Irish Water is a toxic brand that needs to be liquidated, as finally happened with NET. To date the manner in which taxpayers monies have been spend on establishing the monopoly that is Irish Water, are simply inexcusable. Clearly, the experience of the CEO of Irish Water, as the former Dublin City Manager who oversaw the costly Poolbeg incinerator fiasco, has not benefitted Irish Water, the taxpayer nor this Government. The recent local government audit of the Poolbeg incinerator project, strongly criticised the financial management and the enormous cost overruns of this project including €30m spent on consultants and over €50m on land, now valued at just €6m. Yet as we have seen so other in this county, nobody has been held accountable for this mismanagement and the financial burden this has resulted for the taxpayer, and remarkably in an extraordinary turn of circumstances the person who ultimately oversaw this mismanagement is now the Head of Irish Water.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:39:49 +0000
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