Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

There is a water crisis in Cork city. The issue is dirty, discoloured water - brown and orange - coming from the taps. It is coming from the showers. It surges into washing machines and dishwashers. It does not effect every home but there is no question that it has affected many thousands of homes. Uisce Éireann statistics indicate that on nine separate weeks in the past 18 months, complaints from the public were more than ten times the number that would normally be expected. The problem began in earnest when Uisce Éireann gave a €40 million design-build-operate contract for the new Lee Road waterworks to a private, for-profit company. When the company's workers joined a new water main to the existing one and started pumping water through it, they discovered that the water was hard and needed to be softened. To rectify this, they added a chemical. I understand it was caustic soda. However, they added too much, and when the treated water reached the old water mains, it stripped everything away from the walls of the pipes. Some 54% of the city's water distribution network is cast iron with an average age of between 65 and 100. Decades of sediment were torn away. The dirt only had one place to go, which was into the water supply. The orange and brown water poured out of the taps, ruined washes, destroyed dishwashers and damaged washing machines. Uisce Éireann urged householders to let the water run clear, said the clear water was safe to drink and added that both the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the HSE had confirmed this.

Householders want the water to be tested at source in their homes and not back in the treatment plant. I am not aware that this was ever done. Wanting greater certainty, many households began to buy bottled water costing €20 per week or €1,000 per year in a cost-of-living crisis. Where problems persisted, Uisce Éireann sent teams of water workers out to flush the local supply clear. While Uisce Éireann pays for ads to promote water conservation, it is flushing water by the ton load in Cork to correct a mistake of its own making. Meanwhile skilled water workers, who could be upgrading the system, spend one third of their working hours on a firefighting exercise. It is a fiasco. If it had gone on for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, it would be bad enough. However, it has gone on for 18 months without an end in sight. Privatisation has been a disaster.

I ask the Minister two questions. First, will he tell the householders who have had to suffer this situation that what has happened is completely and utterly unacceptable? Second, will he call on Uisce Éireann to put a plan in place to resolve this issue, communicate it to the people of Cork and outline a timeframe for the resolution of this problem?

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