Irish Water will require 382 fewer staff in 31 local authorities across the country from next year, but the utility does not expect it will result in any redundancies.
Currently Irish Water, or parent company Ervia, directly employs 600 staff at five centres. Almost 4,000 more employed by local authorities are assigned to Irish Water under service agreements. While Irish Water pays the councils for these agreements, the staff salaries continue to be paid by local authorities.
Since it was set up when more than 4,300 people worked on water services in local authorities, Irish water has reduced the requirement by about 400. None of these workers were made redundant but were reassigned to other local authority duties.
As it stands fewer than 4,000 workers based in the local authorities remain working on Irish Water projects. But these workers may be assigned any work the local authorities see fit, an Irish water spokeswoman said.
Under a union agreement earlier this year, Irish Water has set a January 1st, 2017 target of 3,171 as the number of local authority staff it requires. The overall target is for 3,100 such workers by 2021.
A further 360 council staff work on the development of future Irish water projects and these will remain.
Seven-year plan
A spokeswoman said the utility’s management plan was to achieve cost savings of €1 billion by 2021. The seven-year business plan also envisages investment of €5.5 billion to bring water infrastructure to an acceptable level.
The plan includes ensuring the current risk of contamination is eliminated, that all current boil water notices are lifted and leakage is reduced. A key aim is that there will be no wastewater discharge without treatment. However while the utility’s plan said it was its aim to raise funds independently of Government, this is now subject to a proposed review which will report to the Dáil.
