James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister of State's response. I ask him to bring the points that have been raised back to the Minister. That would be appreciated.

It comes down to this: it is about the scale of time it will take to get to a point at which this will no longer be an issue unless there is drastic rainfall. As I said, these outages are becoming more frequent. They are lasting much longer than in the past. I want to find an equitable and fair solution to support the communities this has affected. Irish Water needs to provide fresh bottled water services in those areas and work directly with the communities on the ground. I accept that Irish Water is independent of the Government, but Uisce Éireann, Irish Water, needs to do more. This is not an unreasonable request. I hope the Minister will refer it back to Uisce Éireann. If this were in any constituency, I could see the difficulty it would cause other Deputies. As a Government TD in the area, I am quite uncomfortable with the length of time it is taking for this to be dealt with. We need to see these things being done prudently. This impacts and has a huge consequence for households who do not have the provision of a safe water supply into the home, particularly families who may be caring for vulnerable people, elderly people, young children and people trying to raise families and who do not have that supply of fresh drinking water that is safe to consume while going through all the difficulty of the boil water notice over such a long period. It must be understood that for the 9,000 households this is affecting, that is an enormous area. The geographical scale of this is very significant because it covers a huge number of villages in the southern part of my constituency. I just want to see from the Government the same level of urgency that would be shown if such an issue were to occur in somewhere like Dublin.

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