Villagers urge action over water shortage

The water supply to a Cork village is so inadequate that people have to travel miles to relatives’ homes to avail of showers.

A hairdresser in Kildorrery has to keep churns full of water to rinse off shampoo, while pubs have to similarly improvise when flushing toilets.

Noreen Magner has operated a hairdressers in the village’s main street since the late 1980s. She also lives over the premises.

“I have never seen things so bad,” she said. “It’s horrendous. We didn’t have a week throughout the summer when we had continuous supply. For the last two months, myself and my children have had to go to my mother’s for showers. Several times I’ve put shampoo on a customer’s hair and had to use water from a churn to rise it off.”

Liam O’Sullivan, who runs Walsh’s Corner House bar, said he’d lost count of the number of times the water had been off. “Even when it’s on, the pressure is abysmal. The toilets are a problem as they won’t flush.It’s a joke at the best of times,” he said.

Joanne McEldowney opened the Thatch & Tyme restaurant two months ago and described the situation as “an absolute nightmare”.

“I had to close the first week we opened because of no water,” she said. “I had to hire a 500 gallon water tank as back-up and use bottled water. It’s costing me a lot of money. When they [the council] come looking for the rates, they’ll hear from me.” Ms McEldowney added: “I wouldn’t expect anybody to pay for poor service in my restaurant and this is a poor service.”

Nora Nolan lives closest to the village’s concrete reservoir, which she says often leaks. Several of her neighbours have “burnt out” their electric showers because there isn’t enough pressure.

“The asbestos pipes are falling apart, yet they built 70 new houses in the village in the last few years and didn’t seem to wonder how they’d be supplied,” she said.

Labour councillor Ronan Sheehan said he had received numerous complaints.

Irish Water is supposed to take over running all water supplies from Jan 1. Mr Sheehan said if he was in Irish Water, he wouldn’t touch the Kildorrery scheme with a barge pole.

Katherine Walshe, council director of services, said she would apply immediately to the Department of the Environment for “emergency funding” for the situation.

Other council officials said while the short-term solution involved replacing the mains, in the longer term there would also be an issue with the reservoir.

They said it has only two hours of storage capacity, which leaves very little leeway when problems arise.