Nationalisation fans have been repeating that public ownership would turn off the dividend taps for good for quite some time now, punishing shareholders. But who is actually paying dividends in the water sector…
At last week’s Northern Ireland EFRA Select Committee, Water UK boss David Henderson said that Thames Water’s shareholders have not taken a dividend for quite some time. Six privately-owned UK water companies paid no dividends last year, and five the year before…
The Northern Ireland Government on the other hand, owner of publicly-run Northern Ireland Water, has happily pocketed a dividend running at around 2%. As Henderson put it: ‘It’s quite a bit higher than for the six companies that are not paying any dividend at all’…
NI Water is hardly performing well. MPs on Westminster’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee have highlighted its chronic underfunding of struggling wastewater infrastructure, with a think tank telling them 19,000 homes can’t be built because of wastewater capacity constraints. Yet the dividend still flows back to the Government. Nationalisation pays its only shareholder well…
Robert Jenrick told a rally on Monday:
“They say Chancellors are either undertakers or bookies. This one is an ostrich – and when the Chancellor buries his head in the sand, the rest of us, we’re left staring at his you know what.”