Last Wednesday, as the row over water shortages in Northern Ireland raged, Martin
McGuinness was like the clergyman who, knowing his argument is weak, thumps the
pulpit all the harder. "I would love to see all the well-heeled people, all the
well-heeled economists and all the well-heeled know-alls who are arguing for the
imposition of water charges on people who are suffering all sorts of economic
deprivations," he fumed. "Let them, if they want to, voluntarily pay water charges.
We will accept their money."
The deputy first minister was not just defending the Stormont executive's refusal to
take the unpopular step of imposing water rates to pay for investment.
He was showing support for Conor Murphy, the Sinn Féin minister whose Department for
Regional Development is responsible for both road gritting and water supply. There
was more pulpit thumping the next day when McGuinness, Peter Robinson and Murphy
appeared together to give their reaction to the water crisis.
They shifted the blame to Northern Ireland Water (NIW), a governmentowned company,
most of whose board Murphy dismissed before appointing his own nominees. Robinson
called it shambolic, ineffective and not fit for purpose. McGuinness said that
"under no circumstances are we going to stand here and make excuses for a body that
has failed so miserably". Edwin Poots, a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) minister,
told BBC Radio 4 that "the buck stops with Northern Ireland Water".
The company is indeed the obvious target. On December 20, as temperatures plummeted
to -18C in places, those who emailed Laurence Mac-Kenzie, NIW's chief executive,
received an out-of-office reply that said he would be on leave from December 21 to
January 10. Embarrassed staff, who had warned that pipes would burst when the thaw
came, explained that he was keeping in touch on his BlackBerry, "as he tends to do".
MacKenzie did not come back to the office until Monday, by which time the system had
crashed.
Yet Murphy cannot shift all the blame onto MacKenzie. For one thing, he expressed
his complete support for the chief executive as recently as last Thursday, saying
his job was safe. "I know Laurence. I know he has worked very hard," said the
minister.
He had taken MacKenzie's advice to sack other board members over alleged
irregularities in tendering procedures. Those who were removed included Chris
Mellor, then chairman of NIW and a former head of Anglian Water. One leaked email
from MacKenzie to Paul Priestly, a senior civil servant in Murphy's department who
has since been suspended for his part in the sackings, read: "If Chris did leave it
would not be too much of a loss."
Last week Mellor spoke of a "lack of forward planning and a lack of management
leadership" under MacKenzie and his new team. He did not spare the politicians
either, accusing them of "creating a situation where there is a severe lack of
people at the top of the organisation who have experience of running a water
utility". It can be argued that last week's failure of the water system was a
perfect storm, with several factors coming together to produce the worst possible
outcome. But none of them was unforeseen and Murphy is ultimately the man in charge.
Last month Murphy, whose own domestic water supply comes from a private borehole,
radiated confidence. He even dismissed a proposal from Conall McDevitt of the SDLP
for an interdepartmental task force to pool resources in dealing with the low
temperatures.
Now, a task force has been instituted and English civil servants from the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have been drafted in to operate the
switchboards. It is needed to bail out Murphy's department, which was criticised for
inadequate road gritting in the days before the breakdown in the water supply.
Some families were left without water from Christmas until close to new year, and
supply was interrupted in at least three of the province's hospitals.
As the taps ran dry and MacKenzie returned early from his planned break, NIW's
website crashed and the telephone information line broke down. Bottled water was
donated by the Scottish executive because there were insufficient supplies locally,
even though a shortage had been anticipated.
When things go this disastrously wrong, public apologies are normally in order and
ministerial heads often roll. Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish transport minister,
stepped down over the travel chaos caused by the severe winter weather. In his
letter of resignation, he said he "could have done much more to ensure that members
of the public ... were better informed".
The failure of NIW to meet the crisis adequately is symptomatic of weaknesses in the
whole Stormont executive, however. After devolution, it inherited a creaking water
system. During the Troubles, the infrastructure was a low-priority investment for
British ministers.
Much of the network is made up of cast-iron or clay piping, some of it dating back
to the 19th century. Other regions have plastic pipes that are better able to
withstand extremes of temperature. About £2 billion is needed to bring it up to
standard.
Another inherent weakness is reliance on high-ground reservoirs such as Spelga,
which gathers water from the Mourne mountains. In extreme conditions these tend to
freeze over and stop filling. Experts recommend tapping more water from Lough Neagh,
the largest lake in Britain or Ireland, which would require treatment facilities and
drilling ground supplies.
All this was known but, until this winter, the system somehow held up. The tipping
point came when temperatures went from a low of just under -19C to 6C or 7C within a
day.
The rapid thaw, which was predicted at least three days in advance by the Met
Office, burst pipes in homes and businesses, especially in buildings left empty over
the Christmas holidays. That accounted for about half of the leakage. The rest was
caused by breaches in the mains system. Some reservoirs were all but drained.
Murphy and his colleagues are making the most of the inherited nature of their
difficulties. Yet, knowing the risks, the DUP/Sinn Féin-led administration did
little to improve the situation.
There was some limited investment in the water system in order to avoid a European
Union fine, but overall the emphasis was on economies. NIW has absorbed 300
redundancies in the past year, and was ordered to cut planned investment by about
£100m by the regulator.
NIW handed back £21m to Stormont at year end.
Elsewhere in the UK, investment in the water infrastructure was achieved by selling
off the water companies and charging rates. Instead of privatising NIW, a
government-owned company that cannot borrow money against its assets or float shares
like its English equivalents, Murphy wants to nationalise it.
The Northern Ireland executive is committed not to introduce water rates until at
least 2014, a crowd pleaser introduced in its first budget. It has now become a
shibboleth and is touted as evidence that devolution works. As a result, NIW has to
be subsidised from other assembly budgets to the tune of £500m a year. From next
year, capital charges of an additional £400m a year can be deducted from the
Northern Ireland block grant by the Treasury unless the government agrees to forgo
the sum, which seems unlikely.
This is a subject that nobody likes to mention, but it has been brought into sharp
focus by the failure of the water system so close to next May's assembly election.
The proximity of that election is also why Sinn Féin and the DUP have reacted with a
mix of denial and pulpit thumping.
