Council damns Irish Water ‘fiasco’

Cork County Council is to write to the Department of the Environment telling it to "take back control of Irish Water" after the vast majority of councillors described the company as "a fiasco".

During one of the lengthiest debates in recent council history, councillors queued up to criticise the company, with not one word of defence for the utility from Fine Gael members.

The council is also to write to Irish Water chiefs airing its lack of confidence in the company, which should further inflame a meeting to be held between them and Irish Water bosses at Silver Springs Hotel in Cork tomorrow.

The motion by Fianna Fáil councillor Kevin O’Keeffe for the Government to take back Irish Water prompted an onslaught of criticism for the company at a meeting in County Hall yesterday.

Mr O’Keeffe said the Government needed to go back to the drawing board “until a proper management and operational structure was put in place” to run such a utility and that the company seemed to be all about “big wages and bonuses and little else”.

Many, including Independent councillor John Paul O’Shea, said they had tried on numerous occasions to get information about leaks in water and sewerage systems from the Irish Water hotline, only to find that it was “anything but hot”.

He said that, on two occasions when he got through, he was told one matter had been addressed “which it clearly wasn’t”, and that the other was in hand which again it was not, “even though it was several weeks after” he had alerted Irish Water to the issue.

Independent councillor Noel Collins described the company’s operations as “a complete fiasco which should be flushed down the drain” and maintained it was “arrogance personified”.

Independent councillor Michael Collins, Paul Hayes of Sinn Féin, and Dan Joe Fitzgerald of Fianna Fáil said responses to their inquiries to Irish Water about problems had been “appalling” and that the only way they could find out about leaks for their constituents was from local council engineers.

They pointed out it was Irish Water’s responsibility to inform local public representatives, not council employees. However, they said they were grateful they had not been left in the dark by council staff.

Fine Gael councillor Susan McCarthy said the majority of people were prepared to pay for water but were being turned off because “Irish Water is riddled with a myriad of problems including the bonus culture”.

Mayor of County Cork Alan Coleman said he would include issues raised by Sinn Féin councillor Pat Buckley in the letter to Government and Irish Water bosses.