Water problems pouring in from all across the county

Huge frustration over the ongoing water issues affecting several towns and villages in Meath and the lack of accountability from Uisce Eireann were expressed by Meath county councillors at their June meeting, who have requested that representatives from the utility come in to the Chamber to meet with them.

All over the weekend, Duleek, Donore and surroundings areas were without water after a major burst on the mains, causing huge disruption for both households and businesses, and councillors told how some businesses had been forced to close.

This latest outage came on the back of similar problems in Ballivor two weeks ago prompting a call from Cllr Noel French for Uisce Eireann be brought into the chamber to “answer why the service is so abysmal and what they are going to do to fix it”, a call that was backed by his council colleagues, many of whom recounted issues in their own area.

Cllr French who raised the issue said: “It seems like a failed entity. We have problems in Ballivor, Clonard, Dunshaughlin, Duleek. The school in Ballivor had to close because of a water outage. Water tankers are bringing water have from Navan to Ballivor on an almost daily basis.

“In my Trim MD area, we have problems in Ballivor. I'm afraid for Longwood and Clonard. We are just getting over problems in Trim and Enfield- thats' virtually every urban settlement within our MD. When are we going to have a reliable service? People will understand an occasional outage but this is happening on a regular basis. We can't find who is answerable. We can't get answers.”

Cllr Geraldine Keogan told how their Duleek office had been open all weekend as they tried to deal with the outage that she said affected Duleek, Donore, Julianstown, Rathdrinagh, and Knockcommon, adding that water was still out in Stamullen and that Bellewstown NS had to close early that day.

“We had the blessings of the grave yesterday, a big day in the area. The Toll Stone pub was booked out for lunch and had to close. The whole weekend was like nightmare, trying to arrange tankers to come, getting bottled water. And as we said before, we are very limited in what we can do. I was on the phone every hour to try get extra tankers- one tanker is not sufficient. People were coming from all over to try to get water.

“It's very important we get Irish Water in order to speak to them. If they had to pay for all of this disruption they wouldn’t be long about getting issues fixed,” she said as she backed Cllr French's request.

Cllr Stephen McKee said a couple staying in a local business who were going to a wedding, couldn't take a shower and spoke of the impact on local businesses who are paying commercial water rates.

Carol Lennon also spoke of the Duleek outage saying it was not acceptable that businesses had to close down and families suffering. She added councillors were the ones fielding the calls as people couldn't get through to Irish Water. “I understand the emergency team from Meath County Council provided water, but nobody should be without water 24 hours before a tanker comes along.”

Cllr Paddy Meade agreed that Uisce Eireann is “effectively answerable to nobody”. At the weekend in Duleek and Donore, he said businesses had to close, and an 80th birthday had to be moved to another town. “I would be interested to know economically how much it is costing the business community every year,” he said.

Cllr Meade added Uisce Eireann has great strategies when they are working perfectly but argued that bursts will happen even on new pipes and they need more reservoirs in the system so that there is two days supply available to give time for a leak to be fixed.

Cllr Alan Tobin spoke of issues in Ashbourne, especially in higher areas of the town that experience low pressure. For those on night saver electricity tariffs, the water pressure being turned down at night causes problems for appliances.

He spoke of a restaurant in Ashbourne having to close recently and of the impact the outages have on the night-time economy for businesses that are already dealing with additional costs and who he pointed out are paying commercial water rates but are not getting the service they should be getting.

Despite €7.1m being spent on a new pipe from Windmill Hill in Curragha to serve Ashbourne and Ratoath, Cllr Nick Killian said for the third wekeend on the trot that he had no water at home. Now he said there are issues from Staleen to Windmill Hill where businesses are being affected saying hairdressers and restaurants were losing out businesses particularly last weekend.

Cllr Ronan Moore spoke of the importance of community infrastructure in tandem with meeting housing needs and said the most primary one is having enough water adding that people can't understand how more houses are being permitted despite the water issues and that Uisce Eireann will say there is capacity but at the same time is not recognising the frequency of outages.

Cllr Helen Meyer said councillors need a real email and phone number to get real time answers, saying they are only getting the same information everyone else is getting on a text and it can take weeks to get an answer to a query and even then it is a “copy and paste answer”.