Private water supplies for 5,500 people failed to meet drinking water standards in 2022

Local authorities have responsibility for ensuring that private drinking water supplies are monitored for compliance with drinking water standards. File photo: Rui Vieira/PA

One in 30 private water supplies failed to meet drinking water standards last year, with supply for 5,500 people failing the standard for E.coli.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said its results don’t show an improvement and demonstrate that “urgent action is needed to improve private drinking water quality in Ireland”.

While most people get their drinking water from public supplies, it is also provided to approximately 200,000 people across rural communities in Ireland by over 380 group water schemes.

Small schemes provide water to many rural commercial and public activities such as national schools, creches, holiday accommodation. The water for these schemes is often sourced from a groundwater well. The EPA said it monitored 84% of registered small private supplies in Ireland in 2022, up from 75% the previous year.

“Despite this improvement, all private supplies must be monitored annually in line with drinking water legislation, so greater effort is needed by local authorities to monitor all supplies and protect public health,” the EPA said.

However, the total number of small private supplies remains unknown as not all have registered with their local authorities. Local authorities, furthermore, have responsibility for ensuring that private drinking water supplies are monitored for compliance with drinking water standards.

Testing for E.coli, which can cause serious gastrointestinal illness, it found that 95.9% of private group water schemes met the standard. But this still meant that one in 30 failed to meet the required standard. This compared to public supplies where only one in the 734 supplies failed.

Most of the supplies that failed were located in the west and north of the country, including Tory Island off Donegal, Knockdoe in Galway and Curraunboy in Mayo.

The EPA also identified concerns with trihalomethanes (THM), which are a by-product of the chlorine disinfection process and are formed when there is an excess of organic matter in the water source.

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It found 16 private group schemes serving around 14,000 people failed to meet the standard for THM. The EPA also noted that in 2021, the European Commission referred Ireland to the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to THM exceedances.

It urged a number of actions from water suppliers, local authorities and the Department of Housing to improve the situation.

In the case of the department, it recommended that legislation is amended to obligate small water scheme providers to register, and to develop recommendations related to the governance of the rural water sector to improve water quality without delay.

“It is a local public health concern that private drinking water quality hasn’t improved in recent years despite the availability of public funding to support upgrades to water supplies,” said Dr Tom Ryan, the director of the EPA’s office of environmental enforcement.

“In addition, as there is no legal requirement to register private drinking water supplies, it is not possible to quantify the full extent of the risk to public health. The registration of private supplies needs to become a legally enforceable obligation on the supplier.”