Uisce Éireann have defended paying staff millions of euros in bonuses last year – along with a €118,000 pay rise for its chief executive – despite being fined over €30 million for missing corporate targets.
Appearing before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Ireland’s national water utility confirmed that almost 97% of its staff received performance-related bonuses for 2025.
Such payments totalled around €17.59 million, up from €13.36 million in 2024, with politicians questioning how so many staff qualified for bonuses despite falling under targets.
Last November, the company was fined by the regulator, which was followed by further penalties over leaks and bad debts.
In addition to collecting fees from service users, the company received around €1.2 billion of taxypayers’ money annually to maintain and expand the water network. According to accounts filed in 2025, the utility made €600 million in profit last year.
Fine Gael TD James Geohegan went as far as to describe the bonus payments made to staff as a “joke.”
A key issue before the PAC was Chief executive Niall Gleeson’s overall salary, which rose by €118,000 to €391,953 last year. Gleeson defended the remuneration as TDs compared the rise with the much smaller pay rises sought by public-sector workers, arguing that the utility was providing value for money.
“How does someone receive that increase in one year?” asked Deputy Cathy Bennett. “I have to say you must be doing an amazing job,” she said sarcastically.
The utility also confirmed that it had spent €4,000 on media training for personnel in preparation for their appearance before the PAC.
TDs were critical at times of the seeming reluctance to provide direct answers to some questions about staff bonuses and remuneration.
Mr Gleeson, when questioned, said that staff had received training “to give you the best answers possible,” to which Sinn Fein TD Cathy Bennett responded: “All you have to do is tell us the answer.”
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) imposed a €20 million regulatory penalty on Uisce Éireann for missing the leakage target, along with a further €11 million related to non-domestic revenue collection. This brought penalties to €31 million, prompting questions about governance and taxpayer value for money.
The utility said it remained committed to reducing leakage across the country’s water network. However, criticism has been compounded by reports which indicate consumer satisfaction has fallen.
A Water Forum 2026 communications report examining customer experience showed that, according to a nationally representative online survey, just 35% rated customer service as quite good or very good.
Since a 2021 survey, when 51% rated their customer service experience positively. In a 2026 face-to-face survey drawn from hotspot areas, just 10% rated the customer experience as good or very good.
Sean Laffey, the utility’s head of asset management and sustainability, acknowledged the scale of the problems it is facing, admitting: “There are other places where there is sewerage coming up in the streets.” However, he said, “We can’t fix everything everywhere all at once.”
Mr Laffey said that Ireland’s ageing water infrastructure would need decades of investment.
During the meeting, Mr Gleeson warned of a lack of backup capacity in Dublin, with the capital’s water supply described as being on a knife edge.
“If we lost one of those treatment plants, we don’t have a backup,” he told TDs. “That’s the reality, which is not a good situation to have.”
It comes amid an Irish Examiner investigation based on freedom of information figures which found that the utility received more than 2,300 complaints regarding potential illness, discolouration, odours, or the taste of drinking water across 2024 and 2025.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s 2025 drinking-water report, published this year, found that almost 200,000 people had been affected by boil-water or water-restriction notices.
35 public water supplies remained on its Remedial Action List at the end of 2025, serving roughly 467,000 people. The EPA called for better treatment-plant resilience to reduce water quality failures and disruptive notices.