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TÁNAISTE EAMON GILMORE has said the State agency responsible for water charge must show that €50 million spent on consultants in the last year must be shown to be “value for money” and “necessary”.
Irish Water chief executive, John Tierney, revealed earlier today that half of the €100 million the company spent in setting-up over the last 12 months went on consultancy fees with large Irish-based companies on “fixed-price contacts” after “open competition”.
He said such expenditure would not be repeated in the year ahead now that the company has been set-up.
“Irish Water as a business will have very limited expenditure on consultancy because we have hired in directly the expertise itself to work with local authorities to bring about the efficiencies,” he told Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio earlier.
The expenditure has been criticised by Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin as a “scandal waiting to evolve” and the Tánaiste said today that the the figure would have to be justified.
“It does seem to me to be a high figure and I think Irish Water will have to demonstrate that it represents good value for money and that the expenditure was necessary as part of the setup costs for Irish Water,” Gilmore told reporters in Dublin.
He also said that issue of water charges has not yet been settled.
Tierney said earlier that the extent of charges that homeowners face will not be known until August with metering being rolled-out across the country over the coming months.
“There will be a period between March and August by when the final charge has to be determined, when our proposed charge will be accessed by the regulator, who in turn will do a public consultation ultimately on our water charges plan,” the former Dublin city manager said.
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The mindless distruction of Wood Quay by Dublin City Council deprived future generations of what was possibly the most important archaeological site in western Europe and a major lucrative tourist attraction. Instead we have possibly the ugliest building in Europe.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Agreed. http://www.historyireland.com/volume-22/heritage-outrage-wood-quay/
@Honeybadger197: I was on that march, thanks for the link.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Good man, no problem.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: Absolutely 110% correct. This was mindless vandalism by Dublin City Council and if The Minister of Arts and Heritage has her way they will destroy the Moore Street 1916 Battlefield site too. Our future generations heritage is in the hands of mindless individuals who’s motivations are seriously suspect.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: didn’t the Danish government lobby the oiks here in trying to realize the significant nature of woodquay
What happened at Wood Quay is one of the greatest scandals in modern Irish history, the largest Viking Settlement in Europe discovered in our capital city, the revenue that could have been made from tourism, and they built that horrendous obscenity on top of it. The DCC offices should be torn down and the site preserved.
During the time of Brown Envelopes
@Mick Cullen: you say that as if somehow it were in the past Mick. It isn’t. It’s the same as ever and with NAMA getting worse no doubt. Unaccountable, enormously wealthy NAMA. The ultimate ‘hong bao’ (red packet) as they say in China. But plenty more besides it.
Caffrey (my own mother’s surname) stems from the son of Godfred (Viking). McAuliffe, from son of Olaf. McAuley, also from Olaf. In the Irish language, we have margadh, scilling, bád, garraí, seol, etc. They left a very rich heritage in our history. Doyle, Gallagher, etc. have also been linked to the Vikings, but we’re not 100% certain
We know one thing. Sam Stephenson proved them bones dem bones dem dry bones make great hardcore for office block foundations.
Amazing really. To look at those bones and reflect that when they were animated it was in a world so far removed from ours, topographically and geographically the same but in every other aspect far removed as ours as the next habitable planet from us is. To look at their goods and see they’re not so different from ours yet though. Those are the goods of civilized people, at least civilized towards each other and perfectly barbaric to everyone else. And are we so different today, with our foreign wars and colonisations (as in we in the West)? But we absorbed them, despite two hundred years of largely turning the other cheek it seems to me, booted them out at Clontarf and kept what they left behind. So they’re us too. We should have respect for them even if they, setting fires at the bottom of round towers and smashing up the altar vessels while robbing the gold and silver, killing the monks and burning their books of knowledge that were the only things preserved the accumulated wisdom of the Classical Age, did not much respect us. Suppose few hundred years from now archaeologists will be excavating the ruins of Anglo-Irish houses and churchyards and we’ll be saying the same and holding no heart hearts towards their descendants in England no more than we do to the Vikings now. Time heals all as it erodes all.
@John O’Driscoll: well written
It was the Vikings that brought red hair to this country, now every c#nt on the planet thinks everyone with red hair is Irish. Thanks a bunch Vikings
@Blue Moon rising: And the cancer gene as some believe? But is red hair not Celts???
@Blue Moon rising: Did you mean to say blue eyed and blond?
Those two buildings should be to torn down what lies beneath is worth more to Dublin now and in the future than for office space for civil servants
Very interesting, thank you. A word of caution though. Radiocarbon dating has a pretty wide potential error margin. During the Early Medieval period written historical evidence is usually far more reliable for chronological stuff in Ireland in particular. Wish it weren’t so, to cast doubt on such a good story, but lets enjoy the possibility anyway…..
Well their hardly going to meander into the national history museum and say pull a chair up we have something to tell you lovely people of Ireland. The Vikings were savage they played a part in this world but there gone.
The part about the man getting on with it in spite of having a bad back is definitely appropriate to me. Since 2015 I’m waiting for help with a bad back and still waiting under the HSE. I guess I’ll take it to to my grave like this guy. The only difference is my grave won’t be robbed because the Viking dies with more possessions than I have.
have your say