Cathal Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to highlight the ongoing water outages on Whiterock Hill in Wexford town. My office was inundated again this morning with phone calls when the local crèche in that area of Wexford town was forced to close. This is the eighth outage Whiterock Hill has experienced since the beginning of 2025, which means that in the 13 weeks to date in 2025, the water has disappeared and the taps have gone dry eight times. Some of these outages have lasted for days at a time. We are told that Irish Water is monitoring the situation closely, but the knock-on effect of this in Wexford town is that there is now a lack of confidence in the water supply in that area of the town among residents, businesses, developers wishing to expand that area of the town and people operating businesses, who do not have confidence that their businesses will not be impacted in a negative way.

The Government has committed €6 billion to Irish Water in the programme from 2021 to 2025, with a new programme operating at the moment. The reality, however, is that if we cannot get to grips with urban areas like Whiterock Hill that are facing substantial outages regularly, we really need to examine where that money is actually going. I call on this House to have a debate on the delivery of infrastructure, including wastewater and water, for towns and villages like Whiterock Hill.