Irate Longford councillor: Uisce Éireann ‘ran so fast out the door, they brought the hinges and all!’

Hell hath no fury like a chamber of councillors angry with Uisce Éireann. Moments after the meeting commenced, Turlough McGovern spoke up. 

“Irish Water! Where do we stand with this?” he asked. “I’m 6 years beltin’ on about a pipe out in Granard and we seem to be getting nowhere. 

“Can we arrange for a meeting with Irish Water? I’m sure every councillor in this room has issues with them. 

“I’m barking on and getting nowhere. It’s not fair on the people who are suffering. It’s been 6 years! Irish Water met us once and then they ran out the door and almost brought the hinges and all.

“I would like to propose that a meeting be arranged with Irish Water, sooner rather than later. 

“We don’t even know who’s the rep for the Granard area. Can we get this cleared up once and for all?” 

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Councillor Peggy Nolan noted the efficiency and productivity that was lost when the responsibility for water was taken from Longford County Council.  

Said Cllr Nolan, “In College Park recently, a main pipe burst, flooding six houses, four of which were housing OAPs. It’s totally outrageous what was allowed to happen. 

“Those people were housebound. Nothing was done over the whole weekend. When I rang, I was told it would be seen too asap.”  

She added, “Irish Water should be disbanded. When we had our own men, we got results. I once got someone on Christmas Day to go out and sort out a sewage problem. 

“That’s the service we had, and we then handed everything over to Irish Water who are not fit for purpose!” 

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Cllr Mark Casey described the current situation as “nuts” pointing out that an organisation being paid by the government should be answerable to local authorities. Referencing Cllr McGovern’s meeting proposal, the Lanesboro councillor said, “I’ve been dealing with an issue over in Moydow for the last 6 months and I’m telling you one thing, we’re going from Billy to Jack and back again and it's absolutely ridiculous! 

“We had them here around the time of the storm and they were helpful but they haven’t been helpful since. 

“We can’t even get the name of the person in charge of the area. It’s absolutely nuts! They’re being paid by the government, and they should be answerable to us. I second Turlough’s proposal to invite them here for a meeting.”

Granard Councillor Padraig McNamara suggested it be “put to them that they meet us on a  fortnightly basis.” 

He added, “People doing without water for five days is totally unacceptable!”

Cllr Seamus Butler pointed out that “when Irish Water was under the local authorities, you could speak to someone whenever you needed an answer” whereas now, he continued, it was near impossible to get a response. 

He went on to recall, “In 2014, a year after it was set up, I called for Irish Water to nominate a technical executive in Longford County Council, someone we could contact to solve problems locally. 

“Do you know what the answer was? That’s not how we do things!’ You’d think they were in the 19th century! What we have to do is ring Cork and wait for an engineer to come back to us. They really do not care and I wonder where it’s going. They are costing the tax payer!”

Cllr Paul Ross added, “We used to have a monthly meeting with them. Then it became one every two months, and then one every quarter. 

“Now we don’t know where they are. There’s no updates any more!”  

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Cllr Ross stated that the frequent outages in Ardagh and Edgeworthstown were causing “huge annoyance,” a point also echoed by Cllr Mick Cahill who said he was particularly concerned about Ardagh given the number of issues with the water there. 

He said there should be a dedicated person in the county as a point of contact for councillors. 

Cllr Cahill pointed out that currently, if an issue is dealt with, Uisce Éireann tended not to notify or update councillors until much later. 

He explained, “We need live communication because when the water goes, all people want to know is when it's coming back. 

“It causes huge annoyance and it affects  businesses too. If you take a filling station with a coffee machine, that won't work without a mains supply so they're affected as well. 

“It's easy to report a problem, but it's harder to get an update  on when the issue is resolved. It could be two days afterwards when we're told it has been sorted."

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme