Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has so far been on a tour of the country. He has been in the Shannon Callows and he has been in Celbridge. I will bring him to west Waterford and Deputy Buckley will shortly take him across the Cork-Waterford border to east Cork. I will bring him to a number of places in west Waterford, but I will begin with Tallow, County Waterford. There are just over 1,000 people in the town itself. It obviously serves a bigger population than that in the wider hinterland. It is a beautiful old town that used to be on the Waterford to Mallow rail line. Good work is happening there in trying to redevelop a greenway, which I think would be fantastic for the town. It is situated on the River Bride, which flows into the Blackwater, An Abhainn Mhór. It is a beautiful part of the world. As Deputy Buckley will advert to in a moment there has been no shortage of water in west Waterford or east Cork recently. In the case of Tallow, it is water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink in a literal sense. As with so many issues we come across in the House, it arises from the individual making contact with us. An older gentleman contacted me to let me know that he was out of water and out of power. He acknowledges that he is at the end of the line in terms of water pressure. It is a recurring event for him, but for a man of that age to be without water and power for a period of time is not acceptable.

However, when you scratch below the surface you find that it is not an individual instance. There are actually night-time restrictions in place for water in Tallow. All the residents of Tallow are subjected to this shortage. You then speak to the local engineers. The issue is around headroom, as in how much clean drinkable water is being produced. However, more to the point is how much is being lost. It is referred to as unaccounted water by Uisce Éireann. We know it as leakage - huge leakage within the system.

Since there is huge leakage in the system we cannot produce the clean water quickly enough to ensure continuity of supply. If you zoom out again and look across west Waterford you will see it is not a localised problem. There are similar issues in Ballyduff, which again is a small village on the River Blackwater. There are huge headroom issues and it is again down to unaccounted for water. If you move across to Lismore, there is a slightly different issue, where people were taking water from the mountain, which was fine and well, but they have replaced it now with groundwater. That is better in terms of water quality, trihalomethanes, THMs, and so on. However, when they moved from one system to another no reservoir was put in place. That means if there is a power cut, the pump stops and the water supply stops. More than that, as somebody familiar with it described it to me, if you are looking to do any repairs it is like trying to change the light bulb without turning off the light. How are they going to do any sort of repairs, upgrades or expansion of the headroom within that supply? There is no backup, there is no buffer and there is no reservoir.

I am informed that funding has been allocated for Tallow. If funding has been allocated, when will the works begin? That is on the specific instance in Tallow. When we look at the likes of Ballyduff and Lismore with that wider lens, they are on a watercourse but still have headroom issues, which means these towns and villages do not have the opportunity to grow in the way west Waterford deserves.

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