Ep 4 - Breaking barriers to vital infrastructure delivery

Ireland’s water and wastewater systems are largely invisible — buried beneath our roads, footpaths and communities — yet they are among the most vital assets we share. In this episode of Uisce Matters, Angela Ryan, Asset Strategy Senior Manager at Uisce Éireann/Irish Water and one of the original secondees to the Government’s Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, explores why understanding and investing in that hidden network has never been more important.

Angela joins host Orlaith to explore the practical realities of delivering water and wastewater infrastructure in Ireland. She reflects on the pressures facing the system today — from ageing assets and evolving environmental standards to population growth and the legacy of long‑term underinvestment — and how these factors combine to create what she describes as a “perfect storm” of need.

The conversation goes beyond engineering and funding to examine the barriers that slow progress. Angela discusses why infrastructure delivery can be disruptive, why public acceptance of short-term inconvenience is often essential for the common good, and how delays and lengthy lead-in times can prevent investment from going further.

She also explains how prioritisation works in practice, what it means for communities waiting for upgrades, and why breaking cultural, planning, and perception barriers is just as important as securing capital investment. At its core, this episode is about visibility, trust and shared responsibility.

As Angela highlights, these are shared assets, owned by the people of Ireland, and breaking down the barriers to delivering them is key to securing a safe, resilient and sustainable water future.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

There can be the narrative in the public domain. Oh, your water just falls from the sky. What's the problem? There's loads of water in Ireland. There is plenty of water in Ireland. The problem is the assets. It's being able to collect that water, to treat that water, to have the systems in place to bring that water to people. By the time you turn the tap, there has been hundreds of hours spent ensuring the water quality and the infrastructure to get that water to the tap.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome back to Ishka Matters. I'm Orla Blaney, Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Ishka Airin. And in this series, I'm speaking with the people shaping the future of Ireland's water services. Whenever a new home is built, it needs clean water in and wastewater out. And that involves a mostly invisible and complex system of pipes, water treatment plants, and environmental licensing. Today I'm joined by Senior Asset Strategy Manager Angela Ryan. Angela was a secundi to the government's accelerating infrastructure task force, and she unpacks for us the realities of delivering water and wastewater infrastructure in Ireland, from ageing assets and changing environmental standards to population growth and decades of underinvestment that have created what she describes as a perfect storm of need.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

We're not only having to deal with the growth in population, but we also then have to retrospectively upgrade the assets because they weren't invested in properly over years and years. So it's it's two things coming together. What we need is a generational change now. Essentially, what we're trying to do is fit a 16-year-old into 12-year-old's clothes. So we need to develop out those new major projects. So every single asset we put in the ground, every new water treatment plant we build, every penny we spend on wastewater, that belongs to the people of Ireland and it is there for the benefit of people in Ireland.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

We're going to start by going back to April 2024. I was listening to the radio on my way into work when I heard the announcement about new government plans to build over 300,000 new homes in Ireland. News I knew would have significant implications for Ishka Airin' strategy and for Angela's too.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Well, Orla, I was probably heading into work listening to that exact same radio station, and there's that famous scene in Jaws where the sheriff turns around and says, We're going to need a bigger boat when he sees the shark. And I think that was my exact uh reaction. We had had a team working on our next capital investment plan uh for the preceding year in Ishke Aaron. And really within that investment plan, which was going to be the things we were going to invest in over the next five years, we had in that plan enough for housing connections for approximately 200,000 houses. So already we had a difficulty once that announcement was made.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

And when we think back to the, I suppose, the demand for homes, what people mightn't really understand is what's needed in terms of water infrastructure. If a property developer decides he wants to build 300 homes on a site down in Mullingar, what do we need to think about in terms of what's needed to build those homes?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

So if you think about an individual house, what does that need? It needs water in. So you need to be able to turn on the tap and there's water there, but also you need to have water out, which is uh your toilets and your showers, uh, etc. So, in order to have those two things within a given property, you have to have a water treatment plant. So you have to produce the water, then you have to have a pipe network that gets the water uh to the house. And then when you're talking about the wastewater network, you have to have a collection system, a sewer system. So when you flush the toilet, that water can be brought down to a wastewater treatment plant and safely discharged back into the environment. So there's four main asset elements: the water treatment plant, the water distribution network, the sewer network, and the wastewater treatment plant. But layered on top of that as well, we have to have environmental consent. So we have to have a license to abstract that water and then a license to discharge wastewater back into the natural environment. So all of those things have to be in place for every single connection. So there's a lot involved in that. So, as you're saying, a new estate in Mullingar, 300 houses, we have to look at our inventory. We have to say, do we have enough capacity in that water treatment plant? Will the network bring it down? What is the extension required to the network to bring it into that new area with the houses? And then similarly, we look at the same on the wastewater side. So there's a little bit involved in that, and it's very, very specific to location. So if the houses are are over here, we have to check different elements of the network to if they're in a different location. So uh again, there's a little bit of work involved in that.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Angela, to build 300,000 homes and fill the gap that was there in terms of our original targets around the 200,000 mark, what kind of planning goes into figuring out the funding, like the cost of it?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

So when we originally heard uh those radio releases and the program for government that was coming in about the 300,000 houses, we have a team within Ishka Erin, the forward planning team led by Catherine Kelly. And what I asked Catherine to do was to take a look at that. I said, Catherine, uh, the government are going to be in contact with us about the additional housing. We need to be prepared for that. Can we take a look to see what additional infrastructure would need to be put in place to enable that 100,000 houses? And let's put an approximate estimate of the cost of that. So Catherine and her team did an exercise on that. They they looked to see where that housing might go. So the large urban centres, uh, they looked at information within the county development plans, they spoke to some developers and they spoke to the individual local authorities. So they got an impression of where that housing might go, and then they took a look at that in terms of what would be the additional infrastructure that would be required. So did a very, very high-level calculation on that, and we got back to the Department of Housing with a figure of approximately 2 billion euros, additional to the funding that we were already looking for for other issues such as uh water quality leakage reduction and our normal capital expenditure.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

So the money was uh approved by government, the 2 billion plus an extra 10.3 billion. So we've got a 12.3 billion budget over the next five years to help accelerate, I suppose, capacity for housing. And I guess Ishka Erin doesn't build the homes, but we create the network and the pipe so that developers and local authorities can get out and basically build those homes. I'm also curious at the time, and I remember again the conversation around, and I remember one of our colleagues said, you know, Orle, it's not just the money we need. There's so much more to this in terms of actually creating the capacity for those extra homes. So when that comment was made, what are we referring to there about the what we call the blockers to getting moving on those numbers?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Every house needs a connection to the house. So we have to be able to build infrastructure in the public domain to get up to those properties. But similarly, as I was saying, the the water treatment plants, you have to have capacity within those water treatment plants. If we don't have capacity, we have to develop new projects for those plants. We have to develop new licenses to get permission to abstract more water into that. So there's a very, very long lead-in time for some of those projects. Um, even a medium-sized water treatment plant can take over 10 years to get through the initial design processes, through the planning and consenting processes, and then to be constructed on site. So when those announcements are made, it's very, very difficult for us because housing is required immediately. However, the lead-in time to some of the things that we may need to build to enable those houses is quite lengthy. So, again, what we had to do looking at the program for government was looking at how we can best work with what we have at present. So extending the existing networks, ensuring that housing was put in areas where we have capacity available within the networks, and then really looking to see with our wastewater treatment plants and our water treatment plants, can we expand them? Can we upgrade those plants just to squeeze a little bit of extra capacity out of them? So that was the first thing in terms of looking at. But really, as you say, it is not predominantly a money issue. We need to be able to provide that infrastructure. The housing requirements in Ireland will be ongoing, even past 2030. So 300,000 houses only gets us up to then. But we have to be delivering 50,000 houses a year after that. And one of the things that we had identified early was in order to get the housing targets up to 2030, what we were really going to be doing was taking capacity off further years. So we're squeezing the existing assets. And in 2030, we could fall off a cliff edge with that. So we'd have to be getting new big projects coming through the system. So when we'd squeeze every last drop of capacity out of our existing assets, that we would have new assets coming on board and be able to have that continuity for housing delivery.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And Angela, I think it's probably worth maybe highlighting. You know, people say to me all the time, like, how come we are so far behind? How come we've got these infrastructure deficits that are so significant? What's the background to that? Like people scratching their heads going, how come this is such a big challenge for Ishgarin?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Well, historically in Ireland, uh, we did underinvest for many, many decades in water and wastewater services. And that's just a reality. I think we we were a poor country at uh the time there was uh high rates of unemployment, uh, there would have been a lot of emigration in the country. So historically we underinvested. And what we're having to do now is we're not only having to deal with the growth in populations, so uh we have to expand our services uh to meet the requirements of that new population, but we also then have to retrospectively upgrade the assets because they weren't invested in properly over years and years. So it's it's two things coming together at the one time. We have to invest heavily in our in our existing assets in order to bring them up to a standard. Uh, but there's 750,000 additional people in this country over the last decade. So we have to balance investing in the original assets and allowing for growth in the economy.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

And it's particularly challenging, I think, when we read as well that these deficits aren't just water deficits. There's energy deficits in relation to being able to provide the electricity required to power these 300,000 homes, there's broadband required, there's transport systems. Like it's quite a complex challenge beyond just the money, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

It's extremely complex. And uh, Orla, uh, some of the sectors you were talking about there, energy, transport, water, we call them the critical enablers for housing. So if you think of a house, uh what are the minimum things you require in a house? Well, you need water in, water out, uh, you need a little bit of electricity, and you need to be able to get to that house. So they're the three core items there that you can't really live without. And again, all three of those uh enablers are required for any given house.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

And Anja, you and I would have worked, I think, probably for the last 18 months to two years, trying to get the reality of the deficits understood, but also Ishgarin have been putting in place, like what are the solutions to these problems? And I guess two of the very significant projects are the water supply project, which is bringing the pipe up from the Shannon, and to help the whole 50% of the country will benefit from that pipe being put in place. And in addition, the Greater Dublin drainage, which is our sister plant to Rings End, that will help us with wastewater capacity in the Greater Dublin area. Like these are two really critical projects. Are they part of the plan in terms of moving forward? And where are we at with those projects?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Uh so those projects are an intrinsic part of the plan. As I was saying, uh in Ireland up until the mid-90s, we had a population of about three and a half million people. And it it was it was fairly static. It's actually been fairly static since the famine. It might go up in a period of prosperity, but uh then the the economics of the country would mean everybody would emigrate again. So it was kind of a bit steady state there. And uh what has happened with the population over the last 10 or 15 years is it's really started to grow. And what we have is we have infrastructure in this country that's built for a population of about three and a half million people, when we now have a population of about five million people within the country. So we have a real difficulty there that we have to address over time. As I was saying, we look to increase the output from our existing sites, but really what we need is a generational change now. I heard uh one of the members of the infrastructure task force uh on a podcast saying essentially what we're trying to do is to fit a 16-year-old into 12-year-old's clothes uh at present. So, what we need to do is we need to develop out those new major projects. The water supply project or the transfer of water from the River Shannon up to Dublin, that's one of the key ones on the water side. And then Greater Dublin Drainage is a brand new wastewater treatment plant on the north side of Dublin to support the existing wastewater system. Those two projects are absolutely essential. They're not just essential for population growth, they're also essential for the resilience of our networks. So we have two large populations that are sitting on um very, very small assets uh at present. And really, those assets are becoming more and more under pressure as the years go on. So we do need those major projects in place.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

And both of those projects are in the current national development plan. So they're agreed, we're progressing.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

So both projects are within the National Development Plan. They they're they're funded under the National Development Plan. Because they're large projects, they are quite expensive, and sometimes uh that can raise eyebrows in the public domain. But we really have to see with these projects, they are generational projects, they will be game changers. Those projects will enable not just housing within the Greater Dublin area, but also the economy of this country.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

And Angela, for people listening, um they might feel that those projects are really focused on Dublin. And the reality is obviously that we have huge growth in rural areas around the country too. And you'll hear many politicians and local elected reps and local communities frustrated a little bit around the whole reality of what's happening for rural communities. So can you talk to me a little bit about how we make the decision about where to invest the money and what can rural communities hope for in terms of capacity in those rural areas that also need housing?

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Well, Orla, it's a very good point. When the programme for government came out, and as I was saying, we we pulled together that information and we got in contact with the Department of Housing in relation to that, we did identify that the majority of housing is probably going to be delivered in the urban centres. So the the cities and the larger towns within Ireland, and that's where you get density. So you'll you'll get a high number of the housing requirements going into those areas. But there is an absolute need for housing in rural Ireland. So all of those hundreds of small towns and villages across the country. So when we were making that submission into the government, uh we looked at it through two lenses. So, as I was saying, we have an overall requirement of 2 billion euros, but we split that out. We had a look at the rural communities as well. We didn't just focus on the urban centres. So that 2 billion euros is split out 1.7 billion for the urban centres because that's where the majority of the housing will be. But we also set an allocation of 300 million euros for rural Ireland to support those smaller towns and villages. The slight difficulty with that is because you're not 100% sure where that housing is going to go. So instead of focusing on large urban areas, there's a large number of towns and villages. So it's very hard to pick out well, which will be the ones where there'll actually be housing growth, which are the ones that won't. So there's a bigger exercise that's going on in the background right now in relation to that, and we will interface with the local authorities on that.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

And Angela, I've heard you talk a lot about what's called compact development. So higher rise and even just driving them away over here today through the city centre. We're not a big fan of the old high rise, are we, in this country? Tell me a little bit about how important it is maybe to shift our mindset around that if we're going to get both the scale of housing that's required and also a mix. We need a mix of, you know, three, four-bedroomed homes, but we also need, you know, smaller um properties. So what do we need to start thinking about there?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

So, Orla, in relation to density, as you say, when when we're looking at connections, uh, water and wastewater connections. So if we have a lot of single houses, if you if you can imagine there can be 10 or 15 meters of pipe go into those houses from the road and right across through the footpaths and into those houses. So you've got a long length for a single house. Whereas if you have something like an apartment block, there might be 30 or 40 units within an apartment block. So you have that same connection. It's a slightly bigger pipe, but it's just a single length of pipe and it can feed a lot more properties. So there's a value for money piece with density that comes. And that's not just from water and wastewater services, it's also electricity uh provision and transport provision as well. So that compact development is really, really important when you're looking at delivering housing at that scale that is required within Ireland right now.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yeah, some very good points there, Angela. I think the other thing besides the funding and the big strategic projects from the National Development Plan now getting identified for funding. What action, and I know that you are very close to this because you got the call from our uh CEO, Niald Leeson, to ask would you be seconded to the department to work on the accelerating infrastructure task force forum? Tell us a bit about what that was about and how you were involved and engaged in that.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Well, just going back to first principles, Orla, as we were saying there, money is almost the cheapest thing we can get right now. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are investing significantly in infrastructure in Ireland right now. So after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, even up to about 2014, the infrastructure spend in Ireland under National Development Plan was about 4 billion a year. Next year it will go up to 18 billion. So there's a huge amount of increased funding being put into infrastructure. However, over the last 20 years, the rate at which we can deliver infrastructure has really, really slowed down. So it takes twice as long to progress projects, even very, very small projects like a small wastewater treatment plant in rural Ireland. That can take seven to ten years to deliver. So again, it's it's it's having the correct pieces in place. If we don't address the delivery chain for the infrastructure, it doesn't matter how much money we have as a country, we'll never be able to deliver the infrastructure at the scale and pace that is required for housing. So the government did recognize that. So Minister Brown in the Department of Housing, when we sent in that submission looking for the additional$2 billion, that was received very well. But similarly, Minister Jack Chambers in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, he was looking at the infrastructure problems within Ireland. And uh Minister Chambers uh set up early last year a new infrastructure division within his government department. And the role of that infrastructure division was to have a look at the problems uh facing infrastructure delivery in Ireland at present and to try and get a handle on those problems and start eliminating the blockages. I think Minister Chambers, when he was looking at that, he set it up really, really well. So he set up a division within a government department, but this is a wider piece to get that understanding from the utilities that are involved in enabling infrastructure. He set up a number of mechanisms there. So he set up some expert secondes who would go in and work with those civil servants. So uh secondies from the utilities that would be able to accurately portray those problems and some of the things that could be done about them. But uh to keep oversight of it, he also set up uh an independent task force. And the role of that task force was to oversee the work that was going to be done by the infrastructure division and to see if the mechanisms that were being put in place to identify the blockages and remove them uh were going to be good enough. So the minister put two things in place the task force, also the infrastructure division, and he tasked them with coming up with a plan by the end of 2025 to accelerate. Infrastructure in Ireland.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

So the result of that, and I have a copy of it here, is the accelerating infrastructure task force report. And the important word for me on this and plan. So unlike maybe historically, maybe there were lots of projects and reports, this plan has very specific actions in it and they're timelined. So I would feel that's really good news. Talk to me a little bit about the people who are involved in putting this together. So from what companies and what organizations, and I suppose our confidence level in this now moving ahead to get implemented.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Okay, I think it was a it was a very interesting process. So the infrastructure division in Deeper, they brought in secondes from Ishke Aaron. So I was the second expert from Ishkearon, but also from ESB networks from Air Grid, and that was in order to represent electricity requirements. They also had a representative from Transport Infrastructure Ireland and a representative from On Commission Planola, formerly on board Planola. And again, it was to get that knowledge in there, working with the civil servants to say, okay, these are the real day-to-day problems that are being experienced by the infrastructure providers, but also the nominee from On Commission Planola to say, well, this is the difficulty on the processing side of when we're trying to develop those new projects. So it was really, really interesting in that way because there was a mixture of people. So our issues within Ishka Aaron can be quite different to those in ESB. And again, we're we're looking at a system we've we've got to push projects through on Commission and Planola, but they have constraints themselves, like even resourcing uh constraints, etc. So again, it was looking at all of the pieces uh of the puzzle there. In relation to the task force, the task force was set up really, really well. They got some amazing individuals to come onto the task force. So Sean O'Driscoll, the ex-CEO of Glenn Dimplex, was in there, Ferglo Rourke, uh, the chairman of the IDA, Michelle Connolly in infrastructure delivery giant, Melden Mannion, Mary Hughes, Eamon Booth from John Paul Construction, Michael Walsh, an ex CEO of one of the local authorities. So they've really got the task force to have an array of people in there, but really, really strong characters uh that would test us while we were developing out the issues and the solutions.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

And you had a, I suppose, a really tight timeline because of the pressure to deliver all of this. Were there any rows in the task force? I often would like to be uh flying the wall in these meetings to see how they all really go.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Was there a conflict? The external seconds, we we came in about May, and the task force was set up in May of 2025 as well. And really, as you say, with with tight timelines, this report and action plan was to be delivered by the end of the year. But within that as well, there was a public consultation held. And that was to ensure that there was a wider interface there. So even from the public as well, to get their thoughts on if there was an infrastructure difficulty, do they see that infrastructure difficulty, what ideas they would have in terms of speeding that up? So I think that really assisted the public consultation, the task force and uh the infrastructure and division and deeper, what we were all really surprised by was a the number of submissions that were received uh during the consultation stages, there was over 170. But the consistency between them, a lot of people, whether they were housing providers, whether they worked in industry, whether they were members of the public, uh, a lot of the same items kept coming up again and again and again. So although there was some initial, as you say, a little bit of argy bargy initially in relation to the large number of challenges there and identifying the actions, what we could see is that there was a commonality across the board there. And that really allowed us to take them and go, well, look, although there's a list here of hundreds of issues, hundreds of challenges, and hundreds of actions, we can actually categorize these quite well and come up with solutions for them.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah, so I think probably, you know, when you say 170 people submitted, and I can really imagine, you know, the long, long list of all the things that came up and theming them and getting them grouped together in the report itself, which is 136 pages long. And I said it's not just a plan, but it's a plan for action. Um, there were a number of themes that we grouped the individual, I suppose, challenges against. Can you talk to me about some of those? I think there's four.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

The actions were put under four pillars. So uh the pillars were legal reform pillar, a regulatory reform pillar, a delivery and coordination reform pillar, and then a public acceptance pillar.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Angela, I'm going to take you back to the legal piece. And, you know, we're constantly reading in the newspapers and when we're listening to media and talking to friends and family about judicial reviews. And they've got a disproportionate amount probably of debate from the plan. What's our sense of judicial reviews? And actually, they really matter and are important for the public.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Uh well, what is judicial review? Well, judicial review is a right or entitlement to ensure there's checks and balances there in bodies that make decisions. So all of those regulators have to follow processes and procedures. And when they don't follow those processes or procedures, or those processes and procedures uh don't conform to regulation, there has to be a check and balance in there. There has to be an ability for that accountability for somebody to say, well, that's not correct, the way you've gone through that process, and enable people to bring that into check. However, the issue with judicial review is it is supposed to be procedural, it is a check and balance there to make sure everything was followed correctly. And increasingly, what we can see is that it's being used as a mechanism to question the actual decisions that are made. And that is not the purpose of judicial review. We have competence authorities set up, such as the EPA, who their role, they're full of scientists, uh, they're they're qualified people, their role is to assess information, assess the environmental impact of the schemes that we're talking about. Similarly, on Commission Planola, they're trained planners, they assess whether a project conforms to the planning and development regulations, etc. That's that's their duty. That is not the role for the judiciary. So we shouldn't be using judges to adjudicate on projects. And increasingly that has that has happened over time. So with uh judicial review, some of the actions in the report were in relation to judicial review, and it's just to reset that back to what it was supposed to be in in the first place. But one of the pieces and and the pushback in relation to that right now is there there appears to be a narrative in the public domain that we're trying to get rid of people's democratic right to judicial review. That is not the case. Uh that is not the case at all. Uh, with it, it just has to be proportionate. We have to have a system that enables projects to be delivered for the common good whilst upholding the rights of individuals.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Angela, you know, one of the reasons for doing the Ishka Matters podcast series was to share with people the reality of when it when we're talking to about building homes and creating capacity for housing, the level of complexity in actually just even starting to tackle not just the funding and making the the case for the funding, but also the reality of all the different things that need to be considered. I heard Fergal O'Rourke, who's the chair of the IDA, and you touched there on public acceptance. And obviously, in my role around communication, winning the hearts and minds of the public around these projects. I think sometimes infrastructure and utility businesses talk about pipes and money, the length of the pipe and how much it's costing. And we maybe often miss an opportunity to really bring people with us on that journey. Would you agree with that? Is there things we can do to really try and win over people's hearts and minds?

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Well, I completely agree with that. Up until two years ago, I would say infrastructure was not on anybody's minds. And I'm a civil engineer, but I could step back from that and see why is that the case? The majority of our assets are buried below the ground. If you think of Ishka Aaron, 65,000 kilometers of water distribution network, that is not within the visual range of anyone. It's under our roads, it's under our footpaths. Nobody would ever see that on a day-to-day basis. The only real interface we have is when somebody turns a tap, there's either water there or there isn't water there. That's and uh the the first time people usually recognize that there's an infrastructure problem is that when they turn the tap on and there is nothing there. And again, I think we just have to engage people more a little bit in understanding what it takes to get that water to the tap. Because again, there can be the narrative in the public domain. Usher, water just falls from the sky. What's the problem? There's loads of water in Ireland. It's not actually a problem. There is plenty of water in Ireland. It rains uh nine months of the year in this country. The problem is the assets. It's being able to collect that water, to treat that water, to have the systems in place to bring that water to people. So it's getting that understanding of the multitude of things that are involved. By the time you turn the tap at the end of the day, there have been hundreds of hours spent ensuring the water quality and the infrastructure to get that water uh to the tap. So again, I think it's just getting people into the understanding of it and also that it is our shared assets. Uh, I think we're you again unique in this country, and I think it's really, really good. Ishke Aaron is 100% owned by the Irish state. So every single asset we put in the ground, every new water treatment plant we build, every penny we spend on wastewater, that belongs to the people of Ireland, and it is there for the benefit of people in Ireland. So again, I think we've got to move that narrative that uh we've got to have the public support in delivering that infrastructure. The longer the lead-in time for infrastructure, the more it costs. So, for instance, delays on uh the Greater Dublin Drainage Project, for instance, that's probably doubled the cost of that project. And again, we're talking about millions upon millions of euros. When we delay projects like that, we're really taking away the ability to do more things. So, as you were saying, Orla, earlier on, uh in the rural communities as well. So if a project costs 600 million more than it was supposed to, that's 600 million that won't be spent elsewhere in the network. So again, we've got to keep that narrative uh in the public domain. Infrastructure delivery, it can be inconvenient. When we're building large roads, when we're building infrastructure, uh electricity, it does disrupt people for a short period of time, particularly during the construction stages. And that really does impact on their lives. But what we have to get out there is that improved understanding of the common good. So although you may be impacted for a short period of time, we all need these things. We all need our, uh we all need our water and wastewater services, we all need our power supplies, we all need our broadband, etc. So we all need to pull together in relation to this. So I think the the public acceptance one is really, really key to this. It's it's a cultural change, it is, in people understanding the need for infrastructure and then enabling that infrastructure to go through the system.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Angela, I want to ask you a question about the cost of all of this again, back to the reality in terms of just how much is involved in terms of capital investment. And I think I read, you know, back in before 2014, the annual spend on investment, capital investment in our infrastructure was around 300 million. And for the next five years, Ishka Aaron has gone has secured uh 12.3 billion, including obviously the 2 billion that you referred to to create capacity for housing. But the bigger picture in relation to when do we get to a really, really good place, how long is that going to take? And even as an estimate at this stage, it's hard to put a number on it. What kind of money are we talking about?

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Orla, this is it's a it's a really difficult concept to grasp. Within this country, we we have a very dispersed population. So as I was saying, we have a lot of water mains, we have a lot of sewers, we have a lot of individual water and waste water treatment plants. All of those need to be kept on a continuous cycle. So when you build something uh on day one, after about 15 or 16 years, a lot of the electrical equipment needs to be replaced. After about 30 or so years, a lot of the mechanical equipment uh needs to be replaced. After about 40 or 50 years, a lot of the civil uh equipment, the tanks, roads, etc., in those plants need to be replaced, the buildings. So we've got a continual cycle of investment. And because we didn't invest uh adequately for 50 or 60 years, we've got a massive deficit. So we've got a real problem there, but also the standards change all the time, and for good reasons. So the drinking water directives, which are the directives on water quality that come down from Europe, and they set ever more stringent standards on water quality. And each of those new standards that comes in usually requires an investment in more infrastructure. And similarly, on the wastewater side, in terms of environmental protections, the standard through the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive has changed as well. And that means that we have to invest more in wastewater services. So when you add the issues with the existing asset base, the keeping things tipping over once you have them built, and then the changes in legislation also add to that population growth uh across the economy. What you have is a perfect storm of investment needs in there. So although we're talking about large amounts of money that we've uh received under this capital investment cycle under a national development plan, we'll be looking at spending about uh 12.1 billion euros up to 2029. If we were to stand back and look at our overall asset base, we probably need to invest 100 billion.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Big number to get your head around. And it's it's there's there isn't that kind of money around in terms of the kind of all the priorities for the state. So it just means we have to get really efficient about what we choose to invest in and a reality check that not everything is going to get sorted very quickly, that there's a plan behind this.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Well, the the first thing in in relation to that, Orla, is we have a sum of money available at present. So we have to prioritize that. We have to do the big ticket items first. Where there are water quality issues, it's a public health issue. People need to have water that they can consume and drink. So we have to get a handle on those. The environmental issues with our our wastewater treatment plants, again, we have to ensure that we don't pollute the environment on that. So we we have a prioritization process that we go through. But as you were saying, Orla, if if we're to look at that 100 billion euro requirement and a 12 billion investment, it means in any given investment cycle, there's probably 80% of the assets that we're not working on. So 80% of the issues out there aren't going to be addressed in an investment cycle. And what does that mean for the people who live in the areas where those things are an issue? It usually means they're they're prone to outages in their water supply. They can be put on temporary boil water notices if there's any uh disruption at our treatment plants. So, really, it has uh it has a big impact on those communities. And uh what we would say there in that space is we have to go through that process. We have to be able to prioritize. It is going to be difficult for some communities, but we do have to do more as well. We can get that 12 billion euro to go further if uh the lead-in times for our projects are shorter, if the delays to our projects are less. And I think that's the real importance uh of the accelerating infrastructure report there. Let's not waste money, let's not waste time. Uh, the quicker we can get through uh that legacy of underinvestment, uh, the better the outcome for people who live in this country.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

From working with you, the amount of work that goes into the kind of things that you and the team are doing, what do you do to switch off and relax? And how do you keep that work-life balance?

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Uh well, that's uh that's a good one. I've recently, well over the last couple of years, uh taken up running again. I'm a very poor runner, but it's incremental improvement. It's like our asset base. You just have to keep investing in it and uh hopefully you will get there uh at the end of the day. But I find with running and a little bit of uh longer distance running there, it actually really helps clear your mind in the evening. And I do find that you can have a problem in work during the day, and you're wondering how how am I going to resolve this? You go out for a long run and everything just starts to fall into order. So uh it's actually uh it filters over into my hobbies there. Uh, some of the best solutions I've come up with have probably been in and around mile three, where the perspiration is starting uh to break out.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Well, Angela, I'd like to thank you hugely for your contribution today to the Irish state, to the public in really advocating for what's needed to get to these 300,000 homes. It's been a really interesting and fascinating conversation, so I want to say thank you very much. Thanks to Angela Ryan for being our guest on this episode of Ishka Matters and for shining a light on the future of Ireland's water infrastructure. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube and leave a rating or review. And make sure to check out previous episodes in the series with Ishka Erin colleagues, including Niald Leason, Gene Hobbs, and Stephen Burke. We'll catch you next time.