Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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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.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I do not think Kildare is a forgotten county, but the Deputy is well within his rights to represent the different areas. He is well aware of the different geographical areas in Kildare experiencing difficulties at the moment. This response is quite detailed, and I hope it gives him some comfort. If it does not, I ask the Deputy to come back to me and we will seek further detail.

The Deputy will appreciate that the operation of the public water supply, together with operational issues locally are matters for Uisce Eireann, which has statutory responsibility for all aspects of water services planning, delivery and operation at national, regional and local level. Under section 7 of the Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013, neither I, as Minister of State, nor my Department has an operational function in the matter to which the Deputy refers.

However, I have made some inquiries and am informed that there are operational challenges in Celbridge, including Hazelhatch, with the water network under pressure. Uisce Éireann has water mains rehab works approved for design and construction in 2025. The works involve 5.3 km of water mains. Site investigation works are planned in the coming weeks and construction is due to commence in quarter 2 of this year. These works will help address the water network challenges in Celbridge. Turning to Allenwood, Uisce Éireann is carrying out leakage reduction works to provide a more reliable water supply and reduce high levels of leakage. The works involve the replacement of more than 3.7 km of problematic water mains with new modern pipes. The works commenced in November 2024 with more than 1.3 km replaced to date. These works are being carried out as part of Uisce Éireann’s national leakage reduction programme. The works also involve laying new water service connections from the public water main in the road to customers’ property boundaries and connecting it to the customers’ water supply. The works are expected to be completed by Summer 2025.

In Leixlip, phase two of €20 million upgrade works are complete at the Leixlip water treatment plant. This plant has now commenced a third investment phase worth €30 million, aimed at increasing the resilience and capacity of Ireland's second largest water treatment facility, which is programmed to take three years to complete.

I turn to Ballymore Eustace to Saggart pipeline critical repairs. In August 2024, Uisce Éireann successfully completed critical and complex repairs to a major trunk water main that connects Ballymore Eustace water treatment plant and the Saggart reservoir to safeguard water supply to 1.7 million customers in the greater Dublin area. In terms of other mains repairs, works took place on 31 March in Rickardstown, Newbridge and surrounding areas in County Kildare, and mains repair works are scheduled to take place today to Oakfield Heights, Oakfield Park, Oakglade, Hazelmere, Naas and surrounding areas in County Kildare, which may cause supply disruption.

I will come back on more, but that is a pretty detailed response. I appreciate it may not cover every single area the Deputy brought up. If there are outstanding issues the Deputy wants me to raise with Uisce Éireann directly, I am all ears.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I sincerely thank the Minister of State for the detailed reply. It is really helpful and appreciated. He can see himself that when we see a list, it is felt individually but when looked at collectively, it is something of a structural issue. That is point I am trying to raise today. The overall demand, when the population increases to such a degree, means we will see infrastructure start to creak overall. I really appreciate that comprehensive reply and I am struck by recent comments from the chair of Irish Water, who raised concerns about extraordinary complacency and passive indifference in terms of Irish Water infrastructure in recent years. However, this is positive. Unfortunately, it took significant disruption in order for us to get to this amount of investment and I raise it in the context of expected housing growth in a county like Kildare. It is understandably a favoured place to live. There are wonderful communities that just want some of those basics to be right. The Minister of State will hear more from me, and I appreciate the dialogue. It is good to be getting on with these important issues, so I look forward to engaging with him and his Department further as we go on.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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I again thank the Deputy and echo what he said about Uisce Éireann staff on the ground. The rate at which they respond to leaks is extraordinary. They are on the ground straight away, repairing leaks and for some of them it is almost all they do. I guess that comes back to the Deputy's point about a proper strategy for replacing old pipes and longer lengths of old pipes. We mentioned a few areas where they are replacing up to 3 km or 4 km pipes. That needs to be the strategy because the amount of money, resources and workforce hours it takes to repair these leaks is not productive. I completely agree that is a long-term strategy. I take the Deputy's point about Kildare as well. It is a great county with the population increasing, and probably due to increase further, so there has to be a long-term strategy rather than this ad hoc response as one might describe it. There are plans, relating to the water supply project in the eastern and midlands region, to take water from Parteen and Tipperary. That might be a while away, but we need to see that progress and to proceed as far as is possible.

Coming back to Uisce Éireann, its budget is now €2.2 billion. I mentioned that as Ministers and Ministers of State we have no say directly in terms of the operation of Uisce Éireann and the prioritisation of projects, etc., but we provide the budget. It is a significant budget of €2.2 billion with more to come through Apple funding, etc. The message needs to be sent loud and clear to Uisce Éireann. Whether it is water supply or water treatment, if we are serious about dealing with the housing crisis and ramping up construction of houses, then we need to have that infrastructure in place. Uisce Éireann has a body of work to do. We have put the funding behind it. It now needs to start making sure these projects come to fruition, that we can see houses being built and that areas like Kildare have basic water supply.