Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely the great county of Kildare. I am glad the Acting Chairman said that. I welcome the Minister of State, and I hope he will take on board the comments and points I will make. I certainly welcome any answers he has.

"Water is the lifeblood of our bodies, our economy, our nation and our well-being." That is a quote from Mr. Stephen Johnson, a former head of the American Environmental Protection Agency, and it rings completely true to us. I know the Minister of State is familiar with Kildare, where Ballymore Eustace has Ireland's largest water treatment plant, serving a population of almost 1 million people. It is located in County Kildare, although it is looked after by Dublin City Council. I am raising the really important question of water quality and the management of our water treatment plants.

We were all shocked in August to learn of the incidents that occurred at the Ballymore Eustace treatment plant, as well as the Creagh water treatment plant at Gorey. It is clear the management of these facilities failed miserably. Essentially, the management had to protect and safeguard the quality of water coming from these facilities but that did not happen. The failure of the local authorities, including Dublin City Council and Wexford County Council, to report issues with water quality to Irish Water in a timely manner led to an absolutely unacceptable delay in the Environmental Protection Agency and the Health Service Executive being notified, meaning there was no opportunity to issue a boil water notice. A prompt response could have protected the over 900,000 people dependent on this water supply from being needlessly put at risk.

We all accept a boil water notice is a major inconvenience, and I agree that they should be used sparingly and only issued when absolutely necessary. In these cases, however, a notice would have allowed people to protect themselves while the problems at water treatment plants were resolved. The failure in communication allowed consumption to continue as normal when it was known there was a problem.I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, that this was simply unacceptable. I find even more concerning the reports of how the specific issues were dealt with, such as the pump failure in Ballymore Eustace and the power failure at Creagh water treatment plant. Even under normal circumstances we were failing to protect our water supply. A safe and secure water supply is the very least that any of us can expect in our country. A recent audit has found that chlorine levels at the Ballymore Eustace plant were below standard even when the facility was functioning normally. This means that the water coming out of people's taps was regularly put at risk. That is absolutely unacceptable. Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents. The entire process of how we supply water in the State needs to be reviewed. It is clear that enhanced scrutiny and oversight of the entire process is needed. Indeed, a month ago in this House I spoke about the issue whereby a number of eels were entering the water supply in the Carlow north regional water facility, which supplies water to Castledermot in south Kildare.

These are just three examples I have given to the Minister of State but I could go on all day recounting stories of issues from across my county and the country. What plans are in place to ensure a reliable and safe water supply to be provided to Irish citizens? What mitigation measures were put in place to give the general public confidence in the water coming from their taps?