The notoriously outspoken Ryanair boss has today stated that Irish Water is "a mess" as he spoke to a room full of business leaders in Dublin Castle. 

Irish Water hasn't had the greatest start to their existence, at least in PR terms, and it seems that they have very few fans. One of the people who really doesn't like them is Michael O'Leary, who spoke at the CeoForum at Dublin Castle today about the state of business in Ireland. He argued that what business in Ireland needs is less regulation and less government, and that the middle-earners should have their tax rates lowered and the rich were still getting plenty of breaks from the state. 

He added that "all I’ve seen in the last 5 years is more bureaucracy, more quangos, more bloody regulation – all of which is invariably useless and self-defeating", before stating that the nation had wasted its chance during the "glorious crisis over the last 5 years". 

He argued that the government has not restructured the public service at all and has "continued to push the can down the road" rather than making any lasting change.

"You have complete messes like the HSE and Irish Water where we think that just by establishing another quango and shovelling loads of bureaucrats into it we will have some improved services – we won’t. The more bureaucrats you have the worse it will get. We continue to run away from having that kind of fundamental restructuring that will make us a much more efficient, low-cost economy".

O'Leary definitely has a record when it comes to making a splash with his comments, but normally for the wrong reasons. Something tells us that this particular topic is one that he might have a lot of support on, given the widespread demonstrations against water charges here recently. Then again, this is the man who wanted to charge you to use the loo on his flights a few years back... 

Via The Journal