Irish water charges postponed again as snap election looms

摘要

In the last days of 2019, Ireland's regulator announced that plans for the national utility, Irish Water, to charge households using too much water would be pushed back to January 2022 (at the earliest). The date for sending customers the first excess use bills - slated to be Irish Water's first bills to households since 2016 - had already been postponed from July 2019 to January 2021, following a 2017 law. The postponement is bad news for Irish Water's finances at a time when the need for investment is urgent. Crucial infrastructure in and around Dublin is facing frequent, highly publicised failures, such as a week-long boil water notice for over 600,000 people supplied by the Leixlip treatment plant late last year and multiple untreated sewage discharges from the overburdened Ringsend wastewater treatment plant (WWTP).