Businesses getting free water due to oversight
Council officials have been urged to address this situation to ensure a level playing field when national water charges are introduced.
Katherine Walshe, director of water services, revealed that an inventory of supplies is being carried out by the council ahead of the nationwide handover of all water services to Irish Water, which will take place on Jan 1, 2014.
Fine Gael councillor Jerry O’Sullivan said he was aware of “tap-ins”, where some businesses people, such as farmers, were getting water for free while their neighbours were having to pay for it.
He said these connections had not been logged by the council and this needed to be addressed.
Councillors in the West Cork area have expressed concern that much of their water supply scheme is inadequate and when water charges are applied to everybody, the system will need to be drastically improved.
Fianna Fáil councillor Donal O’Rourke said he was concerned that Irish Water would concentrate on upgrading mains in larger population centres such as Dublin and Cork City and that rural areas such as West Cork would be left behind.
Ms Walshe said that about 49% of water was lost in Co Cork due to leaks.
“We have an inventory of assets and know what our leakage rates are,” said Ms Walshe. “Overall it’s 49% in the county, which is a significant issue. There will be a submission made to Irish Water on this. An awful lot of work will have to be done on this exercise before the end of the year.”
Assistant county manager James Fogarty said he was “anxious to keep an eye on Irish Water to ensure that West Cork’s water supply [upgrading] was not overlooked” when that body eventually takes charge of the service.
He said it was not unusual to have such a volume of leaks, pointing out that some of the mains in the county dated back to the Victorian era.
Mr Fogarty said that, in Britain, the authorities had been investing heavily in updating their mains network for the past 20 years and had reduced their leakage to around 25%.
