Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 April 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Response to National Emergencies: Irish Water

9:30 am

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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At the request of the broadcasting and recording services, members and visitors in the Public Gallery are requested to ensure that for the duration of the meeting their mobile phones are turned off completely or switched to airplane, safe or flight mode depending on their device. It is not sufficient to put phones on silent as this will maintain a level of interference with the broadcasting system.

No. 5 on the agenda is response to national emergencies by Irish Water.

On behalf of the committee, I welcome Mr. Jerry Grant, Mr. Eamon Gallen, Ms Katherine Walshe and Mr. Michael O'Leary from Irish Water and Ms Suzanne Collins from Ervia.

By virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and they are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I invite Mr. Jerry Grant to make his opening statement.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

I thank the committee for the invitation to recap for the members the response of Irish Water to national emergencies. We have submitted a short statement which sets out a high level outline of the approach we take and how our systems have evolved over the past number of years through the various storm events and other incidents. I am joined by Eamon Gallen, who is general manager and was previously responsible for customer relations; Katherine Walshe, the head of asset operations; Suzanne Collins, who is responsible for stakeholder and media relations; and Michael O‘Leary, who is responsible for environmental regulation, which includes public health, an important consideration during these events.

We have developed incident management procedures that are in line with international best practice for utilities. They are based around a co-ordinated approach headed by a central crisis management team, with regional crisis incident management teams in place in all the regions. The focus is clearly on the mitigation of risk and trying to minimise the impact on customers, recognising that these types of events have adverse impacts on the services and therefore on communities and businesses. In the early days of Irish Water, we experienced Storm Darwin, which was a significant wind event in the south and south west. That tested the procedures to some degree and probably laid the foundation for the process we have today, which is based around an incident management framework which has a clear governance structure and ties together all the principal capabilities of the organisation.

Working closely with local authorities is a key item. One of the key lessons from some of the early events, particularly the event in Staleen, was the deployment of specific individual incident liaison officers with each local authority. That provides the continuity and alignment of information and activity so we work coherently together. Single points of engagement with other key stakeholders are critical. The principal ones are the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the Health Service Executive, HSE, as well as ESB Networks in a particular way because of the degree of interdependence we have with the ESB for power supply. Effective linkage with the national emergency co-ordination committee is a powerful co-ordinating mechanism for the major national events we have had in the recent past. We have a full-time operational planning and emergency management function, which is within Katherine Walshe's remit. That has the responsibility to develop procedures, regular dry runs and all the contingency planning one would expect a utility to carry out for the type of events we will inevitably experience, particularly weather events and failures of critical assets.

At the heart of everything is effective customer and community relationships, particularly for the category of customers who are classified as vulnerable and have particular dependencies on water services. We work closely with the HSE and community groups to try to identify who those groups are and to ensure we can provide services, including alternative water supplies where that is important. We try our best to keep customers informed through the various communication channels at national, regional and local level with the best information we have to hand. During emergencies, things are often very fluid and it is not always possible to have precise, accurate and up-to-date information, but we have got better at doing that particularly through the deployment of the incident liaison managers in the individual local authorities.

A key part of the process is carrying out post-incident reviews. There has been no event to date from which we have not learned significant lessons to integrate into the procedures. One area of development in the past few months has been the development of specific supplier frameworks so we can call down tanker deployment, water services, standby generators and so forth by having suppliers who have stocks of those in particular areas of the country where we can have them deployed quickly. The issue of power supply is critical. Many of our plants are in relatively remote locations and can be difficult to access at critical times. We are examining the generator strategy we have deployed. Not all of our plants have generators, although many do, so fitting generators in all the critical plants and at critical pumping stations is a key objective.

With regard to resilience, there is a broader question, which we are addressing all the time through the asset investment process, which is to look at critical assets that lack redundancy or are in danger of failure and could have a big impact. What happened in Staleen is an example of that. Part of our ongoing work is the identification of these critical assets and carrying out models to examine single points of failure and where we need to build further redundancy into the assets. That is part of the ongoing investment process. Obviously a key part of that is, for example, the replacement of high burst frequency pipelines. We have replaced approximately 800 km across the country up to the end of last year. These pipelines typically have been the high frequency burst pipes that have been causing maximum inconvenience to customers. We are also developing our national telemetry centre. This provides us with online information on critical assets and how they are performing so we can respond both generally and particularly during emergencies and see what is happening at treatment plants, pumping stations and so forth and what levels of water we have in reservoirs. That information is not necessarily available to us at present across the asset base, but it will be over the next couple of years. We have much of it already but we are building it all the time.

Storm Darwin was a significant event in early 2014, principally in the south west and south. It was the first major event where there was close correlation between ESB Networks and ourselves. We developed very good relationships from then which have stood us in very good stead. I will speak briefly on the Staleen event because it was a significant failure of a major pipeline. We have pipe failures every day and we manage to repair the vast majority of them within the timeframes we give to the public, but the Staleen event brought home the fact that one can never be certain that one is in control of these events. In that case, the local authority had carried out a repair on the pipeline 12 months earlier. We understood the necessary specialists were on site and the crews went about their work. We were criticised later, rightly, for not mobilising the crisis management team earlier. However, on the Friday and the Saturday we had a full expectation that the repair would hold, but it did not. When it did not we knew by Sunday that we had a major crisis and mobilised the crisis management team. We learned some significant lessons from that, including that as a senior management team we have to be in touch with any significant failure that is happening around the country and we have to be sure that the repair is going to work and, if not, we must be prepared to mobilise the crisis team at very short notice so we can put all the support mechanisms in place.

The scale of that outage was very significant, affecting 70,000 people, and it went on for almost a week. It really brought home the critical importance of drinking water for the ordinary business of life, running businesses and public health. Indeed, after five or six days, it becomes apparent that one is getting close to a public health emergency. When toilets cannot be flushed and roof tanks have emptied, it is a very serious situation. At that stage, one is into crisis response in a serious way to try to avert a public health crisis. It shows the absolute criticality of water services being reliable so they can be expected to perform throughout the year and of the necessary resilience being in place so that when there is a major crisis such as we had then we can bring the service back quickly. The treatment plant in Staleen is a critical treatment plant, one of the top ten in the country. It is not in good condition. There is a €20 million upgrade of the plant in progress and we are about to start work on the pipeline replacement, which is important, and the pumping station on the River Boyne. That scheme will be robust and resilient when it is completed.

A key lesson from that was in the area of communications. We did not have enough alignment between ourselves and the local authority so different messages were going out. People had different timelines in their heads and were getting different information. We have done a great deal of work with the local authorities to ensure that area is properly aligned. We also work closely with elected representatives, both national and local. We recognise that elected representatives have close connectivity with communities and understand business sensitivities and particularly vulnerable customer sensitivities and can help us in that area.

We now have that relationship in a much better place.

Storm Ophelia was a major event and the first of the recent national emergencies co-ordinated from the centre. It was a test of the organisation, with a large number of people discommoded for a time. The vast bulk of those were back in service within three days, which was a considerable achievement. It was the first operation of Irish Water's crisis management function that ran seamlessly, notwithstanding that there was significant inconvenience for people.

Storm Emma was even more demanding on us. It had all of the characteristics of Storm Ophelia in the sense that services were knocked out, but there were also the access problems that come with heavy snowfalls. There was a prolonged crisis at the end, given that we then had a leakage problem. Demand increased across all schemes by between 10% and 20%. Any scheme that lacked resilience, such as the greater Dublin area, ran into trouble. We had a couple of weeks of crisis management, which had a considerable impact on the people sitting around me. Mr. Gallen and Ms Walshe were on duty throughout the event and must have been exhausted by the end. I certainly felt exhausted. I pay tribute to all of our staff who were mobilised during the weather events and to all of the local authority staff with whom we worked.

While we must recognise that a freeze event is something that will always put the water system under stress and that Storm Emma was serious, it would not be regarded as an extreme freeze because it happened in March and was relatively short-lived. Had it occurred for two weeks in January, we would have had a massive crisis in Dublin. There are no two ways about it. As matters stood, 500,000 people were without water for significant periods with all of the inconvenience that this entailed, for example, not just being out of water, but only having dirty water when service resumed, airlocks in systems, the call-out of plumbers, etc. It was a serious issue for us and our main concern now is to ensure that we have enough resilience in all water supplies across the country to ride out such events.

Irish Water demonstrated through these events the value of the national utility in achieving an effective co-ordinated management during major emergencies, working with stakeholders and local authority partners. It is critical that the state of the infrastructure be recognised and that, until such time as we can bring it to the right standard at a cost of €15 billion, we will have crises like these and will have to remain alert to our responsibilities in terms of putting contingency plans in place and ensuring our people are up to the challenge. We will continue to do that.

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Grant.

Photo of Victor BoyhanVictor Boyhan (Independent)
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I wish to raise two matters. Before I do, I thank Mr. Grant and his team for a comprehensive statement on Irish Water's role during the national emergencies.

I welcome Mr. Grant's acknowledgement of local authorities, as there has been a long bedding down process in terms of synergies and co-operation with them. I am familiar with Mr. Grant. He has visited Dún Laoghaire many times and I am sure he has been all around the country. The transfer of functions that used to rest in local authorities took a long time. From speaking with councillors, they now see a better relationship, which is welcome. A new space was created, in that they were ceding functions to Irish Water, to put it at its mildest, and Irish Water was provided with liaison officers instantly. I encourage Irish Water to have ongoing discussions with local authorities and keep them informed, in particular their elected members. When they are informed and understand what is happening, they are better able to communicate and act as ambassadors for the facility.

I do not disagree with anything Mr. Grant said, but I have been asked to raise a specific issue regarding Galway city, where there is a proposal for an investment programme of approximately €10 million. The city has major problems with its water supply and there is a suggestion of a synergy between Galway City Council and Irish Water. Will Mr. Grant report on that investment and a timeframe for the project's roll-out?

Photo of Pat CaseyPat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. Grant for his presentation. I acknowledge the openness with which he provides us information whenever we meet. Every event seems to improve the process, especially communication with the community and us as public representatives.

Mr. Grant referred to standby tankers and generators. Regarding the latter, does he have a target number of locations where permanent generators will be placed or will it be a combination of generators on-site permanently and a framework agreement to acquire additional generators? Power was a problem during Storm Ophelia whereas Storm Emma presented a different complication, that being, freezing and the consequential bursting of pipes. I was concerned by Mr. Grant's statement that, had this been a prolonged cold period, it would have had a disastrous effect on the Dublin water supply. This discussion is evolving into session B of today's meeting, but it is critical that we replace pipes in urban areas like Dublin so that we do not have bursts in future. On a technical point, are the replacement pipes being laid deeply enough to be protected from frost or do they have the flexibility to move so that they do not burst in cold weather events? Is there a timeline for the pipe replacement work in Dublin?

Photo of Grace O'SullivanGrace O'Sullivan (Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Grant and his team for attending. We must acknowledge that, with climate change, we will likely see many more unpredictable weather extremes.

My question is for Mr. Gallen and is on providing information to customers. I am from Tramore, County Waterford, where the local radio station was incredible in supporting its listeners and notifying them of the information Irish Water was disseminating. That was useful. Despite the notices, however, people still did not seem to be fully prepared. That caused me some concern. Information on simple measures could have been given to customers and businesses in advance so as to allow them to prepare, for example, keeping stores of portable water and, for sanitation purposes, wastewater. The customer did not have sufficient preparation, which created the types of distress that we heard on radio. In terms of advance notice, can Irish Water do more to prepare the public and business for events like this and, if so, what would that be?

(Interruptions).

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I apologise, but someone's phone is interfering with the system. People might check that their phones are on flight mode.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

I note Senator Boyhan's point about the improved relationship. We continue to work on it. The lines for which Ms Collins is responsible are working better, but we will not be complacent and would welcome any feedback.

I am not clear about which investment in Galway city the Senator means. We have commenced the roll-out of a pipe replacement and water conservation project there. It is a city with a great deal of leakage and many issues with unquantified services and so on. It is also a difficult area in which to undertake pipe replacement work. Like many of our cities, it is unplanned and complicated and the traffic situation is terrible. That project is under way and will make a significant difference to water pressures and supplies in parts of the city.

Overall, we have a good water supply in Galway based on Lough Corrib, but we have considerable problems in west Galway. We intend to extend the scheme north and west of the city to remove much of the weak water supply in places like Carraroe, Tír na Fhia and so on that are vulnerable. That is part of our ongoing rationalisation of water services, particularly supplies. Some of that rationalisation will take a number of investment cycles, given that a great deal of money will be involved, but we will progress it piece by piece.

On Deputy Casey's questions, Ms Katherine Walshe will give details on standby generation and the availability of generators. One lesson we learned is that when one does not have generators on site, one has to wire in replacement ones. We are now putting in plug-in points which will save those three hours spent getting an electrician to a site and wiring in a generator. We did not appreciate the number of sites which did not have a point where one could plug in a generator.

There is a whole complex set of issues around the cold weather period. Many of the old cast-iron pipes and newer Wavin pipes put down by developers over the decades were laid too shallow. What is much more serious is the level at which service connections to houses are laid. Many of them have been laid only three or four inches deep and are guaranteed to freeze even in mild freezes. The service pipes are the single largest problem regarding long-term vulnerability of the system to cold weather. In rural areas, we were 20% up on normal demand during the freeze and 10% in urban areas. In rural areas, much of it was to do with taps to troughs in fields running flat out which had frozen. Many of these were picked up on the Monday or the Tuesday when people got back out and we then saw a significant drop. In the city, it was much more to do with service pipes running in old premises which were not being maintained or visited over the period, as well as the service connections themselves. There were also problems with leaks with the old cast-iron pipes.

Pipe replacement can only be done at a certain rate. One does pipe replacement where there are repeat bursts on a regular basis. We are replacing pipes which burst three or four times a month. We have 800 km completed so far and we have 1,000 km to do. A significant amount of that is in the greater Dublin area. It is not based around individual leaks but multiple frequent failures of pipes which, in turn, impact on communities.

There is no quick-fix to the service connection issue. We cannot go back. We must have much better building control and how properties are handed over to householders. It has been quite shocking so far.

The broader question of climate change is serious. We have seen more events such as high-intensity rainfalls causing flooding in urban areas. There is a trend towards drier summers in Dublin, although members might not think so in the recent past. That will impact on the availability of water locally. At the other extreme, the fact we have more intense floods means one has to balance the storage reservoirs like in Poulaphouca. We cannot allow it go too high because we have to ensure that if there is a major flood that it does not overtop the dam and cause a massive crisis. Climate change has to be factored into all our long-term plans. It has significant cost implications in how we climate-proof our services.

Ms Katherine Walshe:

Over the past number of events, we had up to 60 generators which we were able to deploy. The good point about having a crisis management team in place is that one can work right across country through the regions to deploy the generators where they are necessary and move them on. In that way, we were able to manage the events.

We have 40 critical sites in which we are looking at putting permanent generators. For the remainder of the sites, we are working on plug-in facilities for mobile generators. This week we will be putting out a tender for a central store from which we could deploy some of these generators around the country as needed. We are also working on a comprehensive strategy to find the most appropriate solution for each water and wastewater site.

Photo of Pat CaseyPat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Who is responsible for ensuring service connections have been done correctly when they are being signed off on? Is Irish Water taking full responsibility if connections are not made properly?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

Yes. As part of the connections agreement, we have a complete new suite of specifications and standards for every aspect of water and wastewater services constructed by developers on site. We expect that before we make the connection. We also take in charge straightaway. There is no longer a taking in charge period. We now take in charge on the day the connection is made but only after we are satisfied the work has been done to our specification. We have engineers on the ground who supervise the work. We are not leaving the responsibility to anybody else.

Photo of Pat CaseyPat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Is Irish Water physically inspecting every connection?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

Yes, that is correct.

Mr. Eamon Gallen:

I take the Senator's point. We have all this information on our website and we should have been more proactive in getting it out to customers. We will certainly look at doing that. In addition to the piece about storing up water, there was an education piece about people leaving taps running which caused us many difficulties. It was taking water out of the reservoirs to very little benefit. When it takes it out, it takes a long time to recharge and there are many knock-on consequences.

We are lucky in Ireland that the majority of premises have 24-hour storage in their tanks. Paris and many places in the UK, for example, do not, meaning they are cut off immediately. At least for 24 hours, while we are trying to repair the service, people should have some water.

If we had given out the message about running taps in advance, it might have averted some of the problems. Storage of water, particularly for vulnerable customers, is important. In many cases, by the time we got in touch with a vulnerable customer, either a family member or neighbour had supplied water. It would be much safer for everybody if they had the water in advance. We will take that on board and examine it.

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for the presentations.

On the management and timing of the information which was released, I understand there was a fear, both in Irish Water and the Department, that if people were alerted too early, it could lead to the hoarding of water which, in turn, could have created shortages of supply. I accept that is reasonable. Has there been any assessment, however, of the information campaign at the point at which Irish Water realised those dramatic shortages were about to affect families? There was much frustration among residents at the delay in the issuing of regular updates on when water would be restored. What kind of review has Irish Water done of that? If such a circumstance would happen again in the future, what would it do differently?

In those areas where there were longer than usual delays, and some parts of Dublin were affected longer than others, many residents complained there was not sufficient emergency supply brought in, either through tankers or other sources. Again, what lessons has Irish Water learned from the storm? If it was to face a similar event in the future, what would it do differently this time around?

There was much media commentary at the time, some of it ill-informed, that the dramatic shortages in Dublin in particular were caused by people leaving their taps on. Mr. Grant spoke of three significant leakages in burst pipes in the Dublin region and the impact they had on supply during Storm Emma. Has Irish Water done an analysis of where this lost water was occurring? Is there any data Irish Water can give us which would give us a clearer picture of where the pinch points were? Was it just a small number of large bursts in pipes and mains or other sources? Is there any evidence to suggest there was a dramatic increase in people's usage of water, either by leaving taps on, storing water, etc?

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I apologise for being late and missing the start of the presentation. I was at a meeting on pyrite with the Minister of State, Deputy English.

I commend the staff of Irish Water on the work done during Storm Ophelia and the other more frequent weather events we have had. From my experience in Fingal, the Irish Water crews are responsive. Unfortunately, I see these crews around Fingal a lot because major work is being undertaken there on drinking water mains and foul sewer pipe replacement. On the mains water replacement, what are the targets for leakage reduction? I will be a little colloquial and focus first on Dublin where the major instances of losing water through our mains network, before it even gets to the tap, occur.

Is Irish Water looking at the 1% per annum replacement and how is that going in terms of targets in that regard? There is major work happening in the Swords area with regard to a substantial replacement of the mains. In general terms, what are the targets and what does Irish Water consider to be an acceptable level of water to be lost, if there is such a thing? I have looked at some other cities such as London and Lisbon. I am not sure whether the figures are correct but it appears that Lisbon has seen a reduction in leakage of 64% in eight years. Is a figure like that attainable?

In relation to the greater Dublin drainage, GDD, scheme, and the wastewater treatment and management in the greater Dublin area, I am aware that it comes under the remit of the GDD project but what interaction does Irish Water have with that? Are there still plans afoot to create another larger wastewater treatment plant than the one we have at Ringsend? Is that still going ahead and where do the witnesses consider the project to be at the moment?

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Like others, I also welcome the witnesses and thank them for all their efforts. I also commend the Irish Water teams on the ground and county council workers who helped with both serious weather events. Farmers and the general public were also of great assistance in rural areas especially. Reference was made to generators. In many cases they were brought to sites with the help of farmers. The one good thing that came out of the storm was the meitheal approach whereby people helped each other.

Co-ordination is poor on day-to-day issues. I am aware of that from calls to my office from people who have contacted Irish Water in writing and by phone but they find it difficult to get any acknowledgement. They come back to Oireachtas Members or councillors then. There is some fine tuning to be done in that regard.

In response to a question from Deputy Casey about pipes, Mr. Grant referred to stopcocks, fittings and the geophysical presence at all installations. Is that physically possible? It is a huge issue. If the snowstorm occurred in January, we would have been in an awful situation because most stopcocks are just barely under the ground. I walked down a street near the Dáil where roadworks and building works are ongoing due to the Luas and my conclusion is that the pipe infrastructure is very airy fairy. It is very exposed and there is not much cover. I know asbestos pipes do not shatter but pipes will break with sufficient weight on them. The infrastructure in many villages, towns and cities is very poor given the amount of lead services and asbestos pipes. It is prone to ordinary leakage. It was mentioned that pipes are replaced where there are a couple of leaks per month. I am aware of cases where there are a couple of leaks per month. When one turns off the water, one shatters the line back further and it leads to continuous leaks and outages. I would welcome some idea of the replacement programme and the kind of investment that is needed. We will discuss the situation in Dublin later. The pipes must be a priority because it is pointless putting treated water into faulty pipes. That is an issue.

I will not get into a discussion about paying for water today but I believe lack of access to the meter is a huge difficulty in terms of the public having an awareness of leaks and usage, especially given that the new meters are so deep. Could a device not be installed in the home so that people could monitor their own water usage in the interests of conservation? That would allow leaks to be detected more easily. We need a similar system to the one we have for gas and electricity meters. I accept it is something for the future but it should be considered. One could have a bad leak underground that would be hugely damaging to one's property. Has Irish Water considered any such issues?

I expect most new plants are equipped with generators. I thank Irish Water for its response to the recent issues in Tipperary with the Fethard regional water scheme and its contamination by kerosene. I am not being critical, but in terms of design, build and operate schemes, how is Irish Water certain that contractors are undertaking daily site visits? It has been suggested to me that it is not happening. I have no evidence in that regard and I do not wish to blame anyone but it is vital in such plants that major environmental disasters like the one to which I referred is detected as soon as possible. People are scratching their heads and asking questions.

The case in Tipperary concerned a new plant that was opened in a blaze of glory last year. Mr. Grant was there for it. We spent 40 years trying to get the two plants in Burncoat and Fethard and they were bundled eventually. It is worrying that, first, this could happen and at such a cost. Thankfully, no one was affected by the kerosene but the cleaning costs were considerable. People are still afraid to the drink the water in case it is not sufficiently clean. There are many design, build and operate schemes. Mr. Grant said that all the connections are physically monitored and that problems are taken in charge on the day. That is a very good thing. However, my concern is whether there are actual bodies on the ground to do that. I do not believe Irish Water has the personnel even with the help of the county council. I am not being negative. Who is watching the design, build and operate schemes? I know they are meant to be handed back after approximately 20 years in pristine condition and that they can be examined at that stage but who is watching the caretakers who are supposed to be watching out for safety and whatever jobs need to be done?

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Is Senator O'Sullivan seeking clarification?

Photo of Grace O'SullivanGrace O'Sullivan (Green Party)
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I have just one short question about a response in the event of a nuclear accident given that the water systems here are more or less open. Could Mr. Grant give some idea as to how Irish Water would react in the event of a nuclear accident at one of the many nuclear power plants on the west coast of the UK?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

There are a number of questions. I will get Mr. Gallen involved in some of the customer-related ones in particular and perhaps Ms Collins will say a few words as well on the general communications in response to Deputy Ó Broin.

Generally, in relation to the management and timing of information, there were instances for example in south Dublin where there were difficulties. Deputy Ó Broin will be very familiar with that. There were specific access issues into the higher areas in south Dublin. I will say a couple of things about that. Early on, I advised that there would be restrictions on supply which I think people interpreted as not losing supply. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would make it clear that restrictions on supply mean some people will lose supply, because that is the reality of it. In those higher areas of south Dublin that is inevitable once one starts to cut the supply and one goes up from Firhouse. That was part of it. People expected that they would have some supply. Also, when one restricts supply and it drops out, it takes time to come back and in some cases when it comes back there are air locks and such issues and then there were access difficulties.

Some crews in some parts of the country were extraordinarily busy. They really had an awful lot of work to do. Therefore, times were given to us in good faith by local authorities, which we passed on in good faith. In an emergency one is never sure that the information is accurate. I wish to make that point. To an extent, we sometimes perhaps convey the impression that we are definite but we are not always definite. It is important that we try to give the information with some level of confidence. I have no complaint to make about any crews because they did a fantastic job and they got there when they could get there. In terms of the communication from me and from others to say we were going to restrict supplies, we would have known that it means people would lose water but we did not make it quite clear. We will be clearer in the future.

In terms of emergency supplies and tankering, we started out in Staleen with very limited supplies and as a result of that we procured both tanker availability and one tonne containers we can drop into village communities. We also procured 5 l drums because we realised in Staleen that people do not have sufficiently large receptacles in their house other than pots and pans to bring home water. It is important to try to deploy those. We will build stocks of 2 l bottled water around the country and have them available in various locations.

There is no question but that people really do appreciate that help. When there is a major emergency, the Civil Defence is fantastic at taking water to people. As Deputy Mattie McGrath said, neighbours and communities get involved provided they have access to support. There is no end to the preparation one could engage in. Ms Walshe and her team continually update information and do dry runs regarding different kinds of scenarios.

The question of what happened with the water is very interesting because we had 60 million additional litres of water leaving the plants. Where was it going? One can only draw conclusions based on what happened in the subsequent days. It was clear that, on the Monday, when all the businesses reopened and the water was turned back on, many taps were clearly turned off, plumbers were busy fixing obvious leaks on private properties, and we were out picking up obvious leaks on the ground. We got back very quickly to approximately 50% of the initial leakage. Then the grind got tougher. Over the following weeks, the fixing of leaks that were showing up or were more easily detectable brought us back maybe another 15 Ml. To this day, I would say we are still 15 Ml out on what I would call a general leakage. The disappointing point is that the increase was across the board. In the 750 district meter areas across Dublin, there was a general increase across the area. One could not just say a couple of areas were in trouble - everywhere was and this was the trend across the whole country. The figure in rural areas was up 20% because of the scattered nature of connections and the fact that connections would not always be attended to, particularly those to agricultural fields and premises.

Photo of Eoin Ó BroinEoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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What Mr. Grant is saying is that the additional use of water was overwhelmingly attributable to leaks of various sorts, be they private, commercial or public.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

Yes.

Ms Suzanne Collins:

On communications, as Mr. Grant has specified, during a crisis there is always a challenge associated with getting the information. The crews were out on the ground. Sometimes the leaks were much more complex than expected. In Gorey, for example, there was a very significant leak that left approximately 10,000 people without any water at all. It turned out it was in a forest so the crew had to cut down trees and get JCBs out. With the best of intentions, one wants to be able to provide as much information and as accurately as one can. Sometimes, however, the complexity is discovered only when people are on the ground. In Dublin, between the local authorities and contractors we had, at the maximum, approximately 50 crews out finding the leaks and fixing them. It is absolutely the case that there was hardship. The crews were trying to find and fix the biggest leaks first but the information is only as good as our assessment at the time. We do try to get out as much as we can.

The other significant challenge was the network itself. As Mr. Grant specified, when we put into place the reductions and reduced the pressure, we found people were again out of water in some areas on higher ground, at the extremities of the networks or in apartment blocks where the pumps might not have been working sufficiently. When customers and local representatives were telling us people were very affected in various areas, we were able to use that information, assess it and make adjustments where the reductions were occurring. Again, we were trying to communicate this.

Bearing in mind that we are talking a lot about leaks and pipework, the size and scale of the challenge we face is such that people do not realise what the issue is until there is a problem. They probably should not realise it until there is a problem. For us to communicate to them the size and scale of the problem is a real challenge for us. We have a very small team. There are four of us across the whole country. At times of crisis, hundreds of telephone calls come in. Regional media, in particular, are invaluable at getting the message out, as are local elected representatives, who use their own networks, and other stakeholder groups on the ground. We try to leverage everyone we can. We are very grateful for all the support we get in getting the information out. In every crisis, we have learned lessons. The first was in Stalleen. We got feedback that we were not getting information out quick enough digitally. We now have an out-of-hours emergency roster for Twitter and for updating our website. We are building more collateral and producing more information in different formats. We are trying to use whatever we can to get the information out as quickly as possible and as accurately as possible.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

Let me move on to Deputy O'Brien's questions on leakage and mains replacement. We will get into that in more detail later. Taking the broad view, in the early days of Irish Water, in 2014, we were inundated with issues concerning asbestos cement pipes and the frequency of failure in many parts of the country. It was not exclusively asbestos cement but asbestos was a particular problem. The programme has been very popular in the sense that we have been able to deal with very many of the chronic problems that have been ongoing for ages. They keep turning up, however. I received a representation recently about a pipe that failed seven times in a month. That is intolerable. One might as well have no supply. Therefore, we are going out to deal with this. In the past few months, we have had frameworks in place. We have regional contractors who can go out much quicker. Therefore, we do not have to tender for each project. That is a big help. Obviously, there is a scale one can reach. We will talk about that.

Fundamentally, pipe replacement is about the replacement of pipes that are rotten or effectively failing all the time. Normal leakage is addressed by fixing the pipe. One finds the leak and fixes it. Let me give an example. The 150-year-old pipes from Vartry to Stillorgan, for example, are in perfect condition and they will last another 50 without difficulty.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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What are they made of?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

They are cast iron, built in 1865. They are in absolutely perfect structural condition. Of course there are some leaks in the pipes but to spend €65 million to replace them would be crazy. There would be no rationale for that. What one does have to do, however, is develop very skilled resources to try to locate the individual leaks over the long length of the pipe. We are seeking to develop a special crew for trunk mains to try to deal with that. The focus on pipe replacement has to be where there is chronic failure. The 30-inch main in Swords is a very good example. There has been chronic failure over many years. The only way to deal with that is to replace the pipe because of the impact. It is not a leakage-control measure; it is, in fact, a fundamental service measure. Leakage, on the other hand, is fundamentally about trying to find buried leaks in pipes based on sound effects detectable at valves, etc. It is a slow, meticulous job. A range of capabilities are required. Data are required in the first place. The district meters have to be working. It is very useful to have the domestic meters because they tell a lot about the legitimate demands. One works back from that to determine where the priority leakages are, and then one does step testing at night to try to narrow down the areas. Regardless of where one is in the country, that is the process. We have the same issues across the country. We have a leakage rate of 45% or 46%, on average, nationally. In Dublin, the rate is 36% on the network. That is the challenge we are facing.

With regard to the greater Dublin drainage scheme, let me outline the plan for wastewater in Dublin. Wastewater is just as big an issue for us. The biggest issue at present is getting the plant at Ringsend expanded. The programme that is under way there will bring the figure from a population equivalent of 1.65 million up to 2.4 million. That will bring the capacity to treat the water not only up to the level we need for a significant period, but it will also meet a much higher standard. The nitrogen-----

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Ringsend is the priority.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

It is the immediate priority. We are actually working on that. There are two phases. There is expansion under the existing planning permission. We are applying for new planning permission. By 1 June, we will be in to An Bord Pleanála for planning permission to omit the tunnel and use the technology we now have on board to hit the nitrogen and phosphorus standard.

The next constraint becomes the capacity to get the sewage to Ringsend, particularly from the north-west quadrant, from the Blanchardstown–Mulhuddart–Dunboyne area. The greater Dublin drainage, GDD, project is still going ahead in planning-----

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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That is the orbital sewer.

Mr. Jerry Grant:

That is the orbital sewer. Included is the treatment plant at Clonshaugh and an outfall north of, or around, Portmarnock. That scheme will also go to An Bord Pleanála this year, probably a couple of months later. I would say it will be in the late summer or early autumn. The objective will be to proceed to construction in the coming years, primarily because we will be limited in the north-west quadrant, which is a huge development area right across the airport zone, in terms of how much wastewater development we can facilitate to get into the centre of the city. The long-term strategy is to have two treatment plants, with the vast bulk treated at Ringsend. The Clonshaugh plant will never be more than one third of the size of the plant at Ringsend at its ultimate stage of development. Those two plants will cater for the entire city region out to and including parts of Meath such as Ashbourne and Ratoath and right out to Dunboyne.

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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With regard to Irish Water's leakage reduction targets, is the national figure 46% with regard to leakage - 36% in Dublin? Has Irish Water set a reduction target over a period of time with pipe replacement? Where does it hope to be in five years' time?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

We have set out targets for the greater Dublin area where we want to get to 30% in the first instance and to be there by 2025. We believe we will get to 25% and have an aspiration to get to 20% in the long term. I think that is probably doable but looking at the experience of British cities and British utilities in particular, we believe it will take 20 years to get there.

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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What about nationally?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

Long term, 25% would be very low countrywide. We are probably talking about between 25% and 30% but we would look from area to area. Some rural areas have huge lengths of main for every service and it would be very hard to get leakage in those areas down below 30% because there is so much pipe per connection. We then look at cities like Cork, which is at over 50%. We must go much lower than that but then Cork has particular pressure problems. If members know Cork, they will know that many of the reservoirs are on the high side and much of the city is very flat. Trying to manage pressure there is a very significant issue but a huge replacement programme is under way. Limerick is much better. There has been a lot of work over the years to get Limerick from what was about 50% down to about 40% and possibly into the high 30s. A lot of work has been done in Limerick, mostly hard graft involving find and fix repairs.

Photo of Darragh O'BrienDarragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Would it be acceptable by international standards if Irish Water got down to 25%?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

In terms of Great Britain and Ireland and the kind of networks and old cities we have, the answer is "Yes". In terms of European cities that were rebuilt after the war and that mostly have plastic systems - polyethylene systems - the figure is much lower. Some of them are down to 10% while one or two are lower than that. There are huge variations across France. The figure in Paris is 10% while the figure nationally is 30%.

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Have all the questions been answered?

Mr. Jerry Grant:

I will revisit the issue of co-ordination. There was also a question around access to meters and meter data. I think that is a very important point and one that would be very helpful. With regard to the question about pipes and stopcocks, when I spoke earlier about the direct Irish Water staff supervising developments, that is for developers. That is for all developer connections. We are relying on local authorities for local connections but the specifications are the same. Those specifications involve an appropriate depth, which is 2 ft. of cover - 0.6 m - to prevent frost heave action.

If we look at any town in Ireland, we have the old cast iron in the centre. I received a lot of representations in Clonmel because not only is cast iron a problem from the problem of leakage, it is a problem from the point of view of corrosion in the pipes so every time there is a loss of supply, we get that coloured water problem, which is due to the disturbance of sediments. There is a massive issue nationally.

The priority in terms of replacement has to be those pipes that fail regularly and destroy service. Asbestos cement is probably top of the list nationally in terms of that along with some of the very poor quality PVC that went in during the 1970s. The very old smaller diameter cast iron tends to be a problem while the larger cast iron generally tends to be in very good structural condition and is also a bit easier to find leaks on because there is more of a noise impact that the correlators can pick up.

Design, build, operate, DBO, contracts across the country are preforming very well. I would prefer if we could take them back into direct control but until such time as we build the capability within the utility, we cannot do that. By and large, they are working very well. We have a team that supervises the DBOs. There are penalty mechanisms if they do not perform and pick up on problems. The maintenance regime is built into the contracts and that maintenance is tracked and we only pay for it when it is seen to be implemented.

The issue in Fethard is the kind of thing that is very hard to prevent. The kerosene leak was obviously something that should never have happened. The question of it happening should not arise but it did. If something like that happened in any of our plans, for example, if a tanker turned over on the M4 and its contents got into the Liffey at Leixlip, it would be very difficult to pick that up before it got into the treatment system. In the case of Fethard, the attendant went to the site, got the smell of it in the tanks and checked the concentrate in the reservoir where there seemed to be a small trace of it. By and large from all the testing we have done since, it does not appear to have got into the pipes to any appreciable extent.

It is terribly important that people understand that the HSE did not lift the restriction until it was certain that the water was safe. I want to say that to reassure the people of Fethard because the Deputy is right about the plant. It is a pristine plant and it was a shame that it was destroyed by the kerosene. We went to enormous trouble and spent an awful lot of money to recover the plant so that it is perfect but it is very important that people are reassured. We carried out a huge amount of testing for hydrocarbon concentrations and the HSE was totally satisfied. It does not lift restrictions unless it is 100% sure.

In the broader sense, I am satisfied that DBO contracts are very well supervised but I would say that when something like that happens in a river system, it is very hard to detect it at least before it gets into the plant. We can pick it up in the plant and the standard monitoring systems we have automatically pick up things like the chlorine residual and there are other parameters we pick up automatically. We should probably look across our plants to see if there is any other monitoring we can put at the inlet that would give us early detection of these things for call out because that is probably the best option. We will certainly look into that and see if there is more work we can do there.

Nuclear would fall into that category in the sense that if a nuclear accident happened somewhere, we might get some warning of it because it would not be in Ireland. We are looking to see whether we can pick up but at the end of the day, we could not stop the systems from being contaminated. There is no way we could stop the systems from being contaminated. Quite frankly, it is not the particular type of event we have considered in any detail.

Photo of Grace O'SullivanGrace O'Sullivan (Green Party)
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Today is the 32nd anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, which is why I wanted to bring it up.

Photo of Maria BaileyMaria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I am conscious of time. A lot of this will probably overlap with our next topic so with members' agreement, we can move on. I thank our witnesses for attending the first session today. We got a taste of the complexities and the huge level of work that went on during the last number of adverse weather conditions. I thank them on behalf of the committee for the work that was carried out on the ground. When we were all told to stay at home and be safe, a lot of people were out there trying to solve problems while their families were at home worried so I thank the witnesses for what happened in the past couple of months.

Sitting suspended at 10.48 a.m. and resumed at 10.54 a.m.