Brian Stanley questions Irish Water over £27,000 rural connection

Thanks, and welcome to the guests from the witnesses from both bodies, and I recognise the important work that you're doing, and indeed your workforce in both semi-state bodies. Could I just ask you, and our time is short, so I can keep answers, I'll try and keep my questions very direct, you can keep the answers very direct as well, just in terms of using the time well. What percentage of your funding, first of all, what was your overall spend last year, and what percentage of that funding went on replacing pipes in the ground, in other words, water supply pipes that were leaking, what was the breakdown of that roughly, you know, within a percentage point or so, because obviously you have a pie chart, I presume as a corporate body, that shows your spend for last year, maybe Ms Attridge could answer that. So, last year we spent about £1.4 billion on overall capital expenditure, that's including plants and whatever, and then the leakage repair programme, which is our overall leakage repair programme, £250 million? Yeah, it's £1.6 billion over the next four years, so last year would have been £300 million. My question is, in 2024, how much was spent replacing pipes in the ground? What percentage of your funding, was it 1% or was it 160%? So, it's £300 million against £1.4 million. £300 million? £300 million. Now, that includes replacing pipes in the ground, repairing pipes in the ground, it's a whole programme. Does that include wastewater treatment systems? No. Your overall budget was £1.3 billion last year? £1.3 billion last year. £1.3 billion, OK. OK. So, there was £1 billion spent elsewhere, and I know that's complex, and all other areas. In terms of the Shannon Dublin pipeline, what's the estimated overall cost of that project now? It's between £4.6 and £6 billion. OK. I remember standing on the site before the morning, when they were in the game of, along with yourselves, represented as your own body, when this was at £0.6 of a billion, at Gary Inch, when the reservoir was going to go there. So, it's £4.6 billion now, that's required. And have you certainly been funded for that, or are you dependent on what happens with the review of the National Development Plan? Yes. It's part of the mix of the review of the National Development Plan. It depends on what happens with the National Development Plan. So, £4.6 billion, OK. And could I ask in relation to the cost of connections? One person built in a rural house, the pipe has to be run across a field, not across the runway of an airport or a motorway, just across green grass in his field. And the estimated cost for it, and it's not a long distance, the road stole from the road to where the mains is running, to where the house is, and he got a bill, and he showed me a letter of over 27,000. That is seriously high. Seriously high. I showed the letter to people who worked providing water services, water connections, in the council up to a few years ago, and it would have come in as a fraction of that. And is there an option, the question I'm asking in that case, is there an option for the person to lay the pipe themselves too? Because a lot of conversation here today has been about the difficulty in servicing new estates and all that. And I understand that. You know, there's builders coming to me about that as well. But, you know, here's an area maybe where we can help or let people help themselves. If the householder or the person building the house, a young couple in this case, with a family, you know, who are living in a temporary dwelling, trying to get a house built on his land, on his home place, if they're able to provide the, lay the pipe themselves and bring it to the road, you know, will Irish water facilitate that? There's one way we could speed up some housing, at least in rural areas. Yeah, I'm going to ask Margaret to take power. We are, by year end, we will have a self-laying public roads approach. So it'll be a situation where developers, there will be a list of 80 accredited contractors that the developers, either single houses or... That's fine, Miss Attridge, but it's a different question I'm asking you. This is where the builder of the house, he's building, they're building, this couple are building a one-off house and the pipe needs to be laid a certain number of yards, a certain number of metres across this small field to meet the mains on the road. What I'm saying is that, you know, and you will do the connection, I understand that, but is it acceptable? Will you allow for that person, that household, to be able to bring the pipe to the road across the green field? We don't know the exact circumstances, but look, if we could take that individual question away. Would you please? And go back to me on that. And we do work with individuals, because we know 27,000 when you're building is huge, and we do work with individuals and we do try and get those costs down. I do think, and I'll add on the time to question the Deputy has asked, do you foresee, and you said you're foreseeing with developers self-build, do you see a possibility for, say, a rural dwelling house, the same situation being put in place, where that same pipeline could be delivered at a far cheaper price, done by then through a local contractor rather than through Irish Water. Do you see that as a possibility? Yeah, the issue with developers is the public road side of things, so that brings the complexity of restating the road. If it's going through somebody's field, the request we would have is that there's way leaves, so if we have to go and fix it afterwards... Do you own the field? Do you own it? Then the quote we gave doesn't make any sense to me in that section. So I think we take that one away. I'll be back to you on that one. So just in the ESB, and just welcome to the ESB, you have in the region of 4,000 workers now, you were down, and I know my time is taken with the choir lock, that's all right, I don't mind. I love it, but don't worry. You're pursuing the issue, same issue, but lookit. Just in relation to the ESB and the number of workers that you have, I've seen situations, and DSB had a great record in the past of doing connections, somebody would apply for a connection, and within a week or two weeks, the crew cab or the van would be up there connecting up very, very quickly. You had a workforce of about 9,000. At one stage, you went down to near 2,000, I think, a few years ago. It went very, very low. One of the effects of that is, is that jobs, particularly jobs for public bodies increased. A housing project was held up for a local authority that I'm familiar with. It was held up for a year and a half waiting for the connection, because the connection was held up because ESB couldn't get the contractors to do the connection. In the intervening period, the builder said, I want 60% or 70% more for doing this job. The department said to the council, we're not giving it to you, right? And this went back and forward and back and forward for another six or eight months, right? So do you see the problem that I'm outlining? The point I'm making to you here is that, you know, that Margaret Thatcher believed that if you privatise everything, it would all work out more efficient and cheaper, right? There's an example of how it went completely crazy. And I welcome the fact, in fact, I was talking to a young person recently who has just started an apprenticeship with you. And it's great to see those apprenticeships starting again. But is it your aim to try and increase the work, your own direct workforce that the local manager has control over and can say, I want that job done next week or the week after? In other words, you know, that's not dictated by, oh, the builder or the contractor is off doing other work and we'll come whenever it suits them. You know, it has to be, you have to have control over it. So a direct question, is it your aim to continue to increase that workforce, Mr. Tarrant? Yes, so if you go back to 2021, we were in just this ESB Networks as part of ESB, about 3,350 people. So we've seen significant retirements in the meantime, but we have got that number up over 4,000. We've hired, I said in the opening statement, I think, well over 1,000 people, but I'd say it's probably at least 1,300 that we've hired and we've extended as well our apprenticeship programme from around 60 per annum up to about 150. I read those figures and will that continue? That is the aim of the company. Well, we're also building our resources externally because for the large projects that we need, we need those kind of specialist skills. So we're going to have a balanced model of investing in our own people and hiring people from the experienced electricians. We've hired about 430 of those over recent years as well as expanding our apprenticeship programme and we're about to extend and expand our training centre, which I think is a state-of-the-art facility in Portlaoise over the next kind of period of months. So it's clear that the over-dependence of private contractors didn't work too well in some areas from what I've seen. Well, it's a balanced model I think is important because we need resources. We have superb Indigenous contractors here as well as our own people. And just one quick question just very, very quickly. In relation to the data centres and the housing, and the housing obviously, you know, it's projected, you're probably going to wind up with around somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 new homes now in 2030. In a few words, can you tell me that if data centres increase by another, the demand from them increases, we say at the moment it's around 22-23% of our electricity demand. If it increases to over 30 or up to 35%, will the ESB be able to supply the additional 250,000 houses that are required between now and 2030? As things stand? Well, it's… Look, this isn't an answer that you can give a really quick answer to. There's different requirements on the electricity network, not only data centres. So the data centres were contracted prior, in the main, were contracted prior to the November 2021 decision. But there are other drivers that are driving demand on the electricity network, like the electrification of heat and transport, which are putting huge demands on the sector. So, going back to the point about we deal with connections on a first-come, first-served basis, we're continuing to make offers across all sectors, industrial, commercial and housing. But there are challenges. There's a challenging environment around the electricity network, and that's why investment and investment at pace is so key. And it's north of the internet.