There needs to be a proper debate on how best to fund safe water systems in Northern Ireland

It says that 100+ towns have little “capacity left in their sewer and wastewater systems”.

Stormont needs to allocate a greater amount of money to capital investment, or it could pose a risk to people’s health, caused by factors such as high discharges reaching the sea.

This is an unglamorous topic, which few people follow or understand. It is hard to think of a sphere of public policy that is more easily overlooked. But the difficulties in our water network go to the heart of governance problems in NI.

Note that politicians across the spectrum (albeit not all) have opposed water charges. This is despite the fact that NI is a massive net beneficiary of Treasury funds, has a large and well paid public sector workforce, and has a relatively low council tax burden of on average 0.6% of the sale value of a home (and much less for expensive homes, due to a rates cap).

No-one actually wants water charges, in the same way that no-one actually wants road tolls or car parking charges. The question though is how you fund crucial services if you keep ruling out revenue streams.

Stormont introduced free prescriptions and lowered the age at which people get free travel, at a time of rising life expectancy. We somehow got away with it, but expenditure is going to come under careful scrutiny in the coming years, due to the colossal cost of tackling Covid 19.

And not only that, an unsympathetic mood towards the profligate Celtic fringe has been growing among English taxpayers. This suits republicans, who are happy to see the UK splinter. But it should concern everyone else.

Northern Ireland has found hundreds of millions of pounds to spend on RHI, on windmills, on aspects of NHS provision that could have been provided more safely and efficiently, and on legacy probes to placate terrorists.

It needs to have a mature debate about how it is going to find the funds to invest in water.

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