Mr. Feargal Ó Coigligh:

I would like to thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation to today's meeting. I am joined by Mr. David Flynn, the water advisory unit's principal adviser. We are meeting in the light of a series of very significant and serious incidents in our water supply system. These boil water notices are a major disruption for people and businesses across a large part of our capital city and surrounding areas in Kildare and Meath.

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has expressed his deep concern regarding these incidents, particularly in light of the audit of the Leixlip facility carried out by the EPA following the first boil water notice. The lessons of the audit in March 2019 do not appear to have been learned. The cause of this weekend's incident is now under investigation by Irish Water's process engineers and Fingal County Council. Irish Water and Fingal County Council must fully co-operate and collaborate to deal comprehensively with the issues at Leixlip.

It is a matter for the EPA and the HSE as regulators and for Irish Water as the water utility, working with the local authority, to ensure that national standards are complied with. The priority in such an event is always to ensure that people's health is protected. Irish Water, the HSE and the EPA are all working together in their respective roles to ensure that notices are lifted as soon as water supplies are verified as safe to drink.

However, given the scale of the first boil water notice, the Minister has requested the EPA to provide a report on that incident directly to him once it has finished its own investigations. This report will outline the conclusions of the agency's investigation and any findings that may require a broader policy response. The Minister will consider this report once he has received it.

The Minister has also spoken directly with the managing director of Irish Water, the chief executive of Fingal County Council and the director general of the EPA to better understand how this situation is arising and to ensure that water quality issues are properly dealt with. The Minister will also meet the managing director of Irish Water and the CEO of Fingal County Council once he has received the EPA report to review any lessons learned from the incident.

Overall, the EPA reports that the quality of drinking water in Ireland’s public water supply remains high, as we have heard today. Our supply is safe but it is not yet sufficiently secure. There are risks to the quality and quantity of water supplied. These risks are associated with the nature and age of our infrastructure, as well as with the approach taken to the operation of our water supplies. Both our water and our wastewater systems require substantial and sustained investment in order to bring the systems up to the quality and resilience standards required of a modern service, to provide for population growth and to build resilience in the face of climate change. To support these aims, the Government has approved the Irish Water Strategic Funding Plan 2019-2024. This comprises €6.1 billion of investment in infrastructure and assets and €4.9 billion in operating costs.

Also critical to this improvement programme is the reform of water service delivery. Operating through service level agreements with 31 local authorities, Irish Water has responsibility for public water services but lacks direct or operational control for services on the ground. Without predetermining the outcome of investigations into the exact operational issues at Leixlip wastewater treatment plant, it is clear that there is a critical gap in control between Irish Water's legal responsibility for providing water services and local authorities' operational responsibility on the ground. This is not satisfactory and is no longer fit for purpose.

The Minister is therefore seeking an agreement that would replace the current service level agreements for the provision of water services with arrangements which provide Irish Water with the necessary control of operations, accountability and capacity to manage risk; ensure that Irish Water is not left without an appropriate skilled workforce to carry out its statutory functions and that local authorities are not left with stranded costs; and address workers' concerns about the future deployment of the current local authority water staff.

There has been engagement on these issues at the Workplace Relations Commission, most recently last Thursday.

However, in the light of this most recent incident it is important that all parties now engage with these issues with renewed determination. This is a challenging and complex process. However, the objective is to deliver a single national publicly owned utility that operates to the highest standards nationwide and that the full benefits of the one utility model are realised.