Gorey resident ill for 'ten days' after drinking tainted water
At least 52 people became ill after incidents at Gorey and Ballymore Eustace water treatment plants. File picture: iStock
A woman affected by the serious incident at a water plant in Gorey Co Wexford said she became severely ill after drinking tainted water.
Irish Water has faced severe criticism for the "communication breakdown" and delay in notifying the incidents, which saw at least 52 people become ill after serious incidents were reported at treatment plants in Gorey and Dublin.
Both water supplies are now safe to drink and an audit of every other supply in the country is to be undertaken after the incidents.
One woman told the that she fell ill on August 25. The issue occurred at Gorey water treatment plant between August 19 and 24:
Members of the woman's extended family in different households also fell sick.
“It got to the point where I could hardly walk. I had symptoms on and off for about ten days.”
Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin, a local Sinn Féin councillor, and Leas-Cathaoirleach of the Gorey-Kilmuckridge Municipal District Council said, "there was a breakdown in communication and an unacceptable delay in the notification of the contamination incident to the relevant authorities, following the breakdown in the filtration system at the Creagh Water Treatment Plant.
"It's absolutely essential that a monitoring, as well as a filtration system, be put in place to ensure that this is never allowed to happen again.”
Irish Water is "continuing to work with local authorities around the country to ensure issues are reported in a timely manner to protect public health", a spokesman said.
Irish Water is to prioritise the largest 20 treatment plants following the serious incidents at the plants in Dublin and Gorey.
At Dublin's Ballymore Eustace plant, which serves approximately 877,000 consumers in the greater Dublin area, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found unsafe drinking water was produced for a period of up to 10 hours between August 20 and 21 due to the loss of the Cryptosporidium treatment barrier compounded by inadequate disinfection.
The incident was not notified by Irish Water to the EPA or to the HSE until September 1, "preventing a timely risk assessment of the impact on drinking water quality and to allow interventions to be taken that could have protected public health."
At the Gorey water treatment plant, an incident that arose from a power failure and a chlorine pump failure resulted in water leaving the plant and entering the public supply without the appropriate level of disinfection between August 19 to August 24.
This incident was not notified to the EPA and the HSE until August 26. The HSE is now investigating a public health outbreak in the Gorey area. In both cases, affected consumers were left unaware of the risks they faced and did not have the opportunity to protect themselves, according to the EPA.
Darragh O'Brien, the Minister for Housing, has met with Irish Water officials as well as both the chief executives of Dublin City Council and Wexford County Council.
Mr O’Brien said that in the “immediate term”, an audit of the country’s water treatment plants will be undertaken by Irish Water.
On Monday morning, a number of local representatives are due to meet with Irish Water to discuss the situation.
Fianna Fáil senator Malcolm Byrne said there is a concern that the issue was not treated sufficiently seriously when first reported:
"The meeting is to determine what happened and what mechanisms are in place to ensure it does not happen again.”
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