Killorglin water mains network ‘in crisis’

Irish Water (IW) has been asked to give priority funding to a scheme which has an average of two pipe bursts and supply cut-offs per week.

Kerry County Council had to send a water tanker to Killorglin this week to help people affected by the latest outage in the area.

Since 2008, over 600 breaks have been reported in the Mid-Kerry scheme, costing €800,000 to repair.

An antiquated mains network, dating to the 1960s, is constantly breaking down, resulting in large quantities of water being wasted. The cost of replacing the entire network in the area has been estimated at €33m, beyond the council’s resources.

The council has made a submission to IW to replace 5km of mains and has been in contact with IW again this week to underline the urgency of the situation.

Killorglin Independent councillor Michael Cahill has tabled a motion for next month’s council meeting calling on IW to defer the introduction of water metering and charges to all houses served by the Mid-Kerry scheme.

“I don’t think it would be fair to charge people until the problems are addressed and the entire pipe network is replaced,’’ he said yesterday.

According to senior engineers with Kerry County Council, it “would not be realistic” to replace every pipe in the network, but some pipes were being replaced and the quality of the scheme had improved.