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

Yes, with a reply attached from the chief executive officer of Uisce Éireann on the issue of discoloured water in Cork city, so I thank the Taoiseach for that. However, the correspondence does not include what the Taoiseach promised to get for me, that being, a timescale for the resolution of the problem. The correspondence names mid-November as a target date for the completion of a number of local flushing programmes, but local flushing only lessens the problem, and then only temporarily. It does not solve it.

The correspondence indicates that a major part of the problem is the fact that more than 50% of the Cork water mains system is cast iron and 100 or more years old. According to the correspondence, replacing the system would require an investment of €500 million across several decades. I hope to God that the chief executive officer of Uisce Éireann is not telling the people of Cork that it is going to take decades to solve this problem. Is it?

See this speech in context