Some Uisce Éireann staff paid bonuses of up to €30,000, PAC told
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Uisce Éireann (formerly Irish Water) has said it hopes that by the end of this year only a third of all the water that passes through the network will be lost to leaks.
Its chief executive Niall Gleeson said it wants the percentage to be down to 32% — that compares to 48% when Irish Water was first set up just over a decade ago.
At Thursday’s hearing of the Public Accounts Committee, the company’s director of asset management Sean Laffey said that, from a leakage point of view, “much of the network dating from the 70s and 80s isn’t standing up well”, while the networks seen in newer residential areas around the country are far more robust.
Much of the hearing was dedicated to bonuses at the utility. Uisce Éireann paid out bonuses of up to €30,000 in 2023, a year when profit at the utility increased by more than 50% to €329m.
The company's bonus budget increased by 17% for 2023 to €10.6m, up from €9.17m in 2022.
Niall Gleeson defended the bonus payments as necessary in order to recruit and retain staff.
The average bonus payout at Uisce Éireann in 2023 was just under €6,500.
However, chief financial officer Chris McCarthy told the committee that bonuses are capped at 15% to 20% of salary at a maximum.
“You’re not entitled to this. It’s taxable. You could have someone getting up to €30,000,” Mr McCarthy said.
Mr Gleeson added that roughly 100 of Uisce Éireann's 1,500 staff are entitled to a car allowance.
In discussion with Green Party TD Marc O Cathasaigh, Mr Gleeson acknowledged that while Uisce Éireann does not have to engage with the private market for funding, “we do have to go out to the market for staff”.
Some 328 employees of the utility are paid between €100,000 and €200,000, with a further 16 paid in excess of that.
Mr Gleeson noted that all Uisce Éireann staff have degrees. “They’re well qualified. We pay within market rates, we’re benchmarked. We’re certainly not overpaying. The State needs good people working to deliver good services,” he said.
On the bonus culture at Uisce Éireann, he said that “it’s structured against individual performance, but also against the performance of the company”.
From that point of view, Mr Gleeson said that leakage rates and Housing For All targets would impact the company-side of the bonus “so everybody takes a bit of a hit”.
“It’s built in as part of your terms and conditions. You do have to perform, you do have to deliver,” he said.
Mr Gleeson said that at present the utility is “recruiting quite heavily” as it has a problem in that much of its workforce is older in age, many of them approaching retirement.
“We need a massive recruitment programme,” he said, adding that it’s essential that younger workers be brought in and trained in terms of the country’s water infrastructure.
In terms of the rise in the company’s profits seen last year, Mr Gleeson insisted that “the profit we generate each year is invested directly back into capital”.
“That €300m plus is invested in capital, it is not returned to Government,” he said.