Over the last weekend Irish Water has shown absolute contempt for the people of Clonmel, residents and businesses alike.
It clearly has no regard for nor is it in any way accountable to the people of the town.
Its actions, or rather lack of action, on two serious water outages in the town, on a festival weekend, proves once again that it is not fit for purpose and should be abolished.
The conduct of Irish Water over the last weekend in Clonmel is not just a matter of incompetence or mismanagement but it is the result of a deliberate policy to refuse to deal with water outages at weekends.
Irish Water must be abolished and control of water services must be returned to Local Authorities.
But in the interim, because what happened last weekend could happen again tomorrow, Irish Water must be forced to delegate to a designated County Council/Official/Engineer responsibility, for responding to water situations on their own initiative.
Currently, County Council staff are simply sub-contractors to Irish Water and cannot respond to water disruption until instructed to do so by Irish Water.
The conduct of Irish Water over the last weekend was disgraceful, outrageous, unacceptable and any other such adjective one could care to mention.
The water outage in the town centre was entirely predictable once the weather alert was issued.
The Poulnagunogue supply, a pristine supply, always needed to be managed carefully and that is why Clonmel Borough Council had a dedicated caretaker in place to control, monitor and maintain that supply.
The caretaker had the back-up of Council staff for preventative maintenance and emergency situations. That all changed when Irish Water took over.
The dedicated caretaker was dispensed with, preventative maintenance stopped and Irish Water refuses to call out Council staff for emergencies at weekends.
Irish Water refused to call out Council staff last Saturday and Sunday (weekend) but the staff were called out on Monday. This is exactly what happened last weekend resulting in town centre chaos on a festival weekend.
A second very serious water outage occurred on Sunday last, affecting the area of Clonmel North of the bypass.
I notified Irish water of the situation on Sunday morning advising that this was a separate problem from the town centre issue, that this area was supplied from boreholes at Monroe and that the problem was likely to be as a result of pump malfunction or failure.
Irish Water did nothing about this and allowed the water system to drain down completely leaving this whole area, thousands of houses, without water.
But for the action of County Council staff the pumphouse malfunction would not have been fixed until well into Monday. Even with that residents of the area were without water on Sunday and Monday and some didn’t have a full supply until Tuesday.
This situation cannot be allowed happen again.
Irish Water must be abolished and control of water services must be returned to County Councils.
Seam Healy T.D.
Tel 087 2802199
13/08/2019
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