Debate contribution: NI Water: Funding and Governance

Debate contribution by Mr Peter McReynolds on 29 April 2025.

MLA

Mr Peter McReynolds

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

29 April 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

NI Water: Funding and Governance

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4922333

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank Members for their contributions today. As I have said in the Chamber before, when I studied human rights law back in 2011, I met MLAs for the first time to discuss water management and the creation of Northern Ireland Water in 2007. Back then, the Assembly had to grapple with how to manage and provide water infrastructure to residents and businesses across Northern Ireland. Today, we can all agree or disagree on policy and have different opinions. However, my party colleagues and I consider it vital that we have the bravery to discuss how we manage water — it is a resource that is financially intensive and that does not just fall from the sky in a safe-to-drink state — and that we do so in a way that is transparent, clear and factual. Since becoming an MLA in 2022, I have raised the issue on several occasions. We hear regularly from the Minister that we have looked at the matter time and time again. I am aware of six internal reports that have never been made public to allow an informed discussion and debate to take place, looking at the key facts and collectively deciding from there. Upon asking the Minister and the permanent secretary at a recent Committee meeting to publish those reports, I was told that they were already public and accessible. Further written clarification established that that was not the case. We were then given six unnamed reports alongside two Research and Information Service (RaISe) documents that spanned roughly a decade. As a Committee, we recently had the Audit Office before us. It carried out excellent work to establish an objective and clear way forward in its March 2024 report to address major issues and cracks that are starting to appear in Northern Ireland Water. We have tens of thousands of homeless people in Northern Ireland, but we cannot build homes. We cannot build businesses or create the jobs needed to facilitate them because network connections cannot be made, as we have heard today. The conclusion in the Audit Office report was as follows:

"we encourage the Department and NI Water to complete a comprehensive review of the alternative funding and governance arrangements, led by suitably qualified experts."

However, as with the earlier debate on the establishment of an independent, expert-led infrastructure commission and as with the 2023 Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman's report titled 'Strengthening Our Roots' , a theme emerges: we are no further on with implementing any of those recommendations in 2025. They are crucial to addressing major and fundamental issues with Northern Ireland Water and engaging the work of experts to understand what needs to happen. What we currently have is not working. It is not replicated anywhere across the world that I am aware of. Our funding model and annual budgets to fund the treatment of water to make it safe to drink is not the best way in which to achieve that goal. That is precisely why we have human waste in Belfast lough, which is fast on its way to becoming the next Lough Neagh; human waste 200 metres from my parents' house in north Belfast, which was revealed in a 'Spotlight' programme just last year; an artificially created beach of sewage because the system cannot cope with the sheer volume of rubbish; and a burst storm overflow drain that flowed with toilet water for around three days in north Belfast last summer. That is the system that is being allowed to barely function because it is out of sight and out of mind. What are our options? We could sit back, do nothing and hope for the best, and then, next summer, the outrage will begin, and we will be shocked at how that could happen in 2025 on our front doorsteps. We could push back against water charges, ignoring the fact that we already pay for water in the most inefficient and wasteful way possible. We could shout, "Privatisation" but, in the same breath, praise the work of housing associations, which can operate in a more flexible way — a way that we are asking to explore. The make-up of and issues in Northern Ireland Water come up consistently, as the Minister said today, but things are getting worse, and the problems are not going away. I encourage the Minister to take this matter of public health seriously, implement the recommendations of the Audit Office, conduct a publicly accessible review as a matter of urgency and put the matter to bed. Internal reviews that none of us is able to see are not achieving the goal of supporting Northern Ireland Water.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:31 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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