Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The town of Clonmel in south Tipperary has been devastated this summer by water outages. It was one of the wettest summers in history and people were aghast to find that for 40 different days, there were outages at the Talbot Hotel in Clonmel and large parts of the town of Clonmel. People just cannot believe that Irish Water is treating its customers like this, both domestic and business people in the town, who have suffered damage to their equipment and everything else by these outages for that length of time. We cannot fill the reservoirs in the Galtee scheme or the Ardfinnan regional scheme or Lingaun in Carrick-on-Suir, and we have a number of sources for Clonmel.

The messing and downright tomfoolery that is going on with Irish Water and the neglect of its customers is appalling. When is the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, going to do something with this cabal that was set up by a Fine Gael Government and is not answerable to anybody? People are entitled to an answer. It is not a Third World country we live in. It is incredible to think that a town like Clonmel, the biggest inland town in the country, would be without water for 40 days since April of this year. It continued with outages at night, low pressure and everything else and there has been no engagement with Irish Water.

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