A high-profile economist is warning that Irish Water is overspending on staff by up to €2 Billion.
Professor John Fitzgerald of the ESRI says the agency will pay more than 4-thousand staff - when it only needs about 17 hundred.
Irish Water is obliged by law to pay for local authority employees around the country who work on the current system. Those agreements will run up until 2026 - and involve about 4-thousand-300 staff.
Professor John Fitzgerald of the ESRI says that's about 2-and-a-half thousand more than Irish Water actually needs - and will see it overspend by 1 to 2 billion euro over the coming decade.
He says the scale of the waste involved in this structure makes all other problems associated with the establishment of the new utility "pale into insignificance".
It follows the news late last week that 29 staff recruited by Irish Water are earning over 100-thousand euro.
However, Professor Fitzgerald says setting up Irish Water will free an extra 500 million euro in Budget 2015 - which could be used for tax cuts or extra expenditure.
