Water supply in the Dublin region is balanced on a knife edge. The Council can produce just over 500million litres per day, but on a normal weekday more than this is used. Reservoirs only hold about a day and a half of usage. When the January freeze came up, water usage rose, the system sprung leaks all over the place, and the reservoirs fell by about 50%. Throughout the country the system for production and delivery of water in Ireland has been starved of investment and is archaic:

● It is managed by 34 different local bodies and even in good times almost 45% of the water is lost through leakage.
● This is the equivalent of €500m worth going down the drain.

Leakage in Dublin is better at 30%, but it requires the replacement of nearly 1,500 kilometres of old water mains to reach the target of 20%. At the present rate of progress that will take 25 years! The city needs a new water source, probably from the Shannon.

Fine Gael has proposed a radical reorganisation of the system under a single authority: Irish Water and the attraction of the mix of public and private money to invest €4,000m.