‘Let council take responsibility for the care and repair of local water schemes’

Independent councillor Brian Fitzgerald is calling on the government to return responsibility for local water schemes to county councils and leave Uisce Eireann to deal with major projects.

He argued that Uisce Eireann was not fit for purpose and that local authorities had done a much better job of looking after local water and wastewater schemes.

His motion for Meath County Council to call on the government to introduce amending legislation to restructure Uisce Eireann to facilitate the returning of responsibility of care and maintenance of water treatment and waste water treatment plants to each local authority, and to allow Uisce Eireann to manage regional and national proposed schemes, was agreed at the October meeting of Meath County Council.

Cllr Fitzgerald said at every meeting issues are raised and they are dealing with “the symptoms rather than dealing with the problem” and wants Uisce Eireann to be restructured so that it is similar to the NRA where responsibility for local and regional roads stayed with local authorities, while motorways and national roads are the responsibility of the NRA.

“If you were to ring the NRA about a pothole in some road you would look fairly stupid and that is essentially what is happening with Irish Water. County councils all over Ireland built up the infrastructure both in wastewater and water in every county. They were on the ball and knew exactly where a problem would emerge, and how to handle it. Management had a list of people they could call at the drop of a hat to come in to resolve the problems that were there.”

However, Cllr Fitzgerald said that handing over schemes throughout the county had made it “impossible”, adding that you cannot manage those schemes remotely which is what appears to be happening.

“As a result of that, the councils are getting a bad name because people perceive them to be the ones that are responsible and that they should be able to sort out the problems.”

Cllr Fitzgerald said the motion was fairly straightforward in that it would require the government to introduce amending legislation to hand back the local schemes to the local authorities and f to use the sample template for the setting up of NRA.

“Minister give us back the power to deal with the local schemes and get these guys to deal with the major ones similar to the way the NRA dealt with the building of roads throughout the country,” he concluded.

- Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme