Its immediate future maybe still up for debate within the Dail, but the clear out of staff at the much hated state utility Irish Water has already begun as the company say they will require 382 fewer staff begining from next year.
The company say the large offloading of staff across 31 local authorities nationwide will come as they look to restructure the company as part of their seven year plan, although the utility sates they do not expect payout any redundancies as the departing staff will be distributed to other areas by local authorities .
According to Irish Water’s parent company Ervia, the company currently employs 600 staff at five centres nationwide whilst the remainder of its employees are employed by local authorities under service agreements.
Although Irish Water pays local councils for these agreements, the staff salaries are paid by local authorities.
The company say they are continuing with their policy to cut local authority staff after they relieved around 300 employees from their duties earlier this year without the need of handing out costly redundancies as local authorities successfully relocated these employees to different sectors.
Irish Water currently have 4,000 people working for them through the scheme but that number is expected to be reduced to around 3,700 following the recently announced cuts.