Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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459. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if, in respect of the recent incident at the Ballymore Eustace water treatment plant, the notice he received regarding the shortages; the engagement he made with the authorities at the plant; the additional funding that has been allocated to alleviate the problem; the long term solutions he is advocating to address this type of issue from repeating; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49295/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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On 30 October 2013 my Department was notified by Dublin City Council that problems were being experienced with the treatment process at the Ballymore Eustace Water Treatment Plant. Contact between my Department and the City Council continued over subsequent days and I visited the plant on 4 November to see, at first hand, the issues involved and how the matter could be resolved.

The problems experienced at Ballymore Eustace were plant operational and management issues. While no specific capital funding was required to resolve these problems, my Department’s Water Services Investment Programme 2010 - 2013 provides for planning of a large number of schemes and contracts in the Greater Dublin Area, including a scheme to provide a new long-term water source to service the future needs of the area. In addition to this scheme, a series of watermain rehabilitation contracts to reduce leakage have been undertaken in the Dublin area and more are to follow.

The completed contracts have delivered over 120 kilometres of rehabilitated mains, resulting in savings of over 7.8 million litres of water per day. Contracts to increase the supply capacity in the region through the expansion of existing water treatment plants in Ballymore Eustace and Leixlip are nearing completion and a new treatment plant at Srowland, Athy, County Kildare, that abstracts water from the River Barrow, has recently come on stream. I understand that the Ballymore Eustace plant is now back to full treatment output and that the water restrictions in the Greater Dublin Area have been lifted.