Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Our water system in Kildare is failing many of us, and too regularly. I was a member of Kildare County Council between 2019 and 2024. Over those five years, a number of issues - housing, roads, climate, public transport, young people services and water - arose on a consistent basis. The anger, frustration and utter dismay felt by Kildare residents about water outages is palpable. N one is immune. Residents in Celbridge, Primrose Hill and Hazelhatch have experienced gruelling outages. They have had enough. Leixlip was the location of significant works to a burst water main in March. Schools have had to close because of bust mains in Maynooth. For many years, residents in Prosperous, Allenwood, Coill Dubh, Robertstown – the list goes on – have had to buy between two to four litres of water in their weekly shop to cover these unplanned water outages.

The Minister of State will not need me to tell him about the impact of water outages. People with babies at home or those with severe illness have their lives turned upside down for the duration. Businesses have to close or make some form of alteration to their offering and then there are the nursing homes, universities and schools. Water outages impact every facet of communities. The people of Kildare are very reasonable. An odd outage here or there is understandable; things happen and problems occur. The phenomenal staff of Uisce Éireann do their utmost to rectify problems as quickly as possible. However, what people in Kildare are experiencing is not reasonable any more. Any meaningful long-term solutions to these problems are not close enough to give any cause for comfort.

In 1991, when I was four years old, the population of Kildare was 122,000. Some 34 years later, that population has more than doubled to nearly 250,000. In a very short time we have had a phenomenal increase in our population in Kildare but we have not had the strategic capital investment in our infrastructure. It is about capacity and the ability to cope with increased demand on our systems. Every service in Kildare is vulnerable. Our healthcare, education and transport systems are unable to cope with the increased demand without any additional capacity. Kildare has been forgotten by successive Governments. We might fix a burst main here or replace a small section of pipe there but until the Government acknowledges the level of attention and funding that is required by but that is not being given to a county that continues to grow exponentially, the shops in Kildare will need to keep supplies of bottled water on the shelves.

I am a very proud former member of Kildare County Council. The level of expertise and commitment from staff in the local authority is incredible. They just need the resources to do their work. Similarly, I want to stress I am in no way critical of Uisce Éireann staff.

They respond emphatically when called upon to the latest outage, often working day and night to restore what is a basic amenity. What Kildare needs is to be treated for what it is. We are the fifth most densely populated local authority in the State, but the level of funding and resources allocated to Kildare is rarely the fifth largest amount. It is quite the opposite in fact. I understand there are significant projects being planned, which aim to alleviate some of these issues, but we must acknowledge that gives little solace to people who just want to be able to turn their taps on and expect water to come out.

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