Debate contribution: NI Water Challenges

Debate contribution by Mr Patrick Brown on 8 April 2024.

MLA: Mr Patrick Brown
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 8 April 2024
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: NI Water Challenges
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4481624

Text

I thank the signatories to the motion for tabling it. It is a very important issue and one that deserves perhaps more attention than it often gets. NI Water is a crucial aspect of our infrastructure in Northern Ireland and provides a service that none of us can live without: clean, fresh water and the safe disposal of waste water. I also welcome the amendment and confirm our party's support for the motion and the amendment. For too long, NI Water has been a Cinderella service that has suffered from historical underinvestment. The timely report at the end of March from the NI Audit Office was an important reminder of what we already know about the underfunding of Northern Ireland's water infrastructure: it has been chronically neglected. It is foundational economic infrastructure that is crucial to our quality of life and to the wider economy. It requires prioritisation in the forthcoming Budget. The current projected shortfall of £1 billion for PC21 means that NI Water will no longer be able to deliver the essential works required to increase the capacity of its network and meet the current demand for water infrastructure. No doubt many of us will have read last week's press release from the Construction Employers Federation. The Member for Strangford referenced it. It is a stark reminder of the housing crisis that we face and the fact that current waste water constraints are holding back the building of as many as 19,000 new homes across Northern Ireland. I know at first hand of that real-life impact, with every major town in my constituency featured on the Audit Office's list of waste water treatment works that are at or near capacity. Just before Easter, I visited the treatment works in the village of Dundrum, where development associations, trying to spur regeneration efforts in the area, are having to find creative and expensive ways of taking storm water out of combined systems to increase capacity in the waste water system and avoid statutory objections to their planning applications. While I welcome NI Water's willingness to work with developers and planners to find those creative solutions, it really should not have to be this way. It adds unnecessary costs to developers, costs that, as has been discussed, will ultimately be passed on to homebuyers and reflect wasted potential in our economy. Without those additional costs, housing and regeneration projects could move more quickly through the planning system, helping us meet the chronic lack of housing in Northern Ireland and move the economy forward. With that in mind, I welcome the Audit Office's recommendation that the Department and NI Water complete a comprehensive review of alternative funding and governance arrangements. Our party has long expressed concern that the current model is unsustainable. We have, for example, supported the idea of mutualising NI Water with guidance from the Fiscal Council. To be clear, because this often gets lost in the commentary around the issue, mutualisation is not privatisation. Indeed, the Minister is right to rule out any privatisation, the failure of which we can clearly see in England in the case of Thames Water, which is £18·3 billion in debt and last year dumped a record 72 billion litres of untreated raw sewage into waterways. The Thames Water model, in which the company has, for years, borrowed against assets to fund shareholder dividends rather than invest in upgrades to its asset base and has consistently hiked charges on consumers to keep itself afloat, is, of course, something that we must avoid.
Certainly.
I thank the Member; I am well aware of that. The intervention that she took from the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone also outlined that issue with regard to consent to discharge. It is a scary fact. It must be noted that the mutualised Welsh Water has also faced significant issues over governance and transparency, but it is, at least, more accountable and follows a not-for-profit model, a model from which we can, potentially, learn lessons. Going down the route of mutualisation will still require careful stewardship, and any mutualised body must be structured in a way that ensures that households are not burdened with additional charges for water. A mutualised model for NI Water would require democratic oversight and transparent pricing in which the company would be able to borrow against its extensive asset base with loans secured by the public expenditure that NI Water would continue to receive for providing its vital service. That could be achieved by a separation of the charges already levied on water in the regional rate, for example. That would, essentially, be a change in how we account for that expenditure. That is not privatisation in sheep's clothing and should not be automatically dismissed on the basis of ideology, which should not get in the way of a sustainable funding model for NI Water. Ultimately, the current funding constraints across the Executive and the lack of a multi-year budget mean that NI Water will remain strategically and financially constrained. We cannot continue to tread water on this, Minister, and, unfortunately, blaming Tory austerity and pointing out funding shortfalls will not cut it. The Minister must wade through the detail and present clear and tangible solutions.

872 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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