Hotline to speed up water pipe repairs breaks down

A dedicated hotline set up by a local authority to speed up repairs of broken water pipes did not work — because its phonelines were over capacity.

Cork County Council officials yesterday admitted to a glitch in their new centralised reporting system, which was supposed to speed up repairs.

This emerged after Cllr Donal O’Rourke (FF) maintained that centralising the system was actually slowing down repairs.