Irish Water was set up in 2012 to introduce the most ambitious water metering programme in the world. The plan was to get Irish people to finally pay to upgrade a nineteenth-century water system. The water metering programme began in August 2013 and was carried out at breakneck speed. However, it did not go to plan and the issue of water charges divided Ireland. There were nationwide demonstrations, and confrontations in housing estates involving water meter contractors, gardai and water charge protesters. The programme ended in political disaster, with a humiliated government having to send out one million refunds.

With access to unpublished documents, and interviews with the key personalities on both sides, In Deep Water provides a blow-by-blow account of how it all went wrong. The rows at cabinet. The warnings that went unheeded. The water women. The smartphone-wielding protesters. And the minister who threatened to reduce people’s water to a trickle.

Compulsively readable and fast paced, In Deep Water gives an inside view of the controversy that divided Ireland.